Cox Communications has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that held the company liable for its’ subscribers' copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court’s review “is needed to restore a uniform, nationwide copyright damages regime,” the company said.

The case, which began in 2018 when Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and other music giants sued Cox, aims to make it so internet service providers including Cox are accountable for piracy committed by their subscribers.

Also Read: Cox Moves to Overturn $1 Billion Music Suit 

The music companies argued that the privately held cable company “knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers.”

In 2019, a Virginia jury found Cox liable for a total of $1 billion in damages for its customers’ violations of over 10,000 music copyrights.

The Fourth Circuit of Appeals tossed the $1 billion in copyright damages against the company in February, ordering a new trial to determine damages.

However the court did find Cox liable for copyright infringement if it failed to terminate service for subscribers who pirate music.

The only way to avoid liability under the lower court decisions, according to Cox, would be terminate internet service for large groups of people, including public facilities like “coffee shops, hospitals and universities.”

“This ruling, should it stand, would force ISPs to terminate internet service to households or businesses based on unproven allegations of infringing activity,” Cox wrote in a statement. “The accounts that continued to rack up notices without termination were regional ISPs, universities, hotels, military housing, and other business accounts used by hundreds or thousands of individual users.”

Cox insists that it should not be liable for infringement at all, and warns that the decision might cause ISPs to increase surveillance on customers.

“This would result in a fundamental change to how ISPs must manage their networks,” wrote Cox. “Many may feel that the only way to avoid liability is to monitor the activity of their subscribers to ensure no one is engaging in potentially unlawful conduct.”

The company also stressed the potential impact to rural communities— many of whom lack access to an alternate internet offering, should they come under suspicion and have their service discontinued.

“At a time when the U.S. is spending billions of dollars to ensure that every American has access to the internet, the idea that homes could so easily lose that access goes against the goals of getting everyone connected,” wrote Cox. “Termination would leave a household with no viable access to the internet.”

Cox says that less than 1% of its subscribers were accused of music piracy during the period in question in the court trial.

Currently, the provider has approximately 6.5 million total residential and commercial customers. 

A day after reaching an agreement in principle with DirecTV on a new longterm pay TV carriage deal, bankrupt regional-sports-network distributor Diamond Sports Group has announced another big carriage renewal. 

But it's not with Comcast, whose incumbent deal with Diamond expired Tuesday. (Update, that negotiation seemed to go south after this post was initially filed.)

Diamond instead announced that it has come to terms with Cox Communications, the privately held, Atlanta-based cable company that's believed to have around 2.6-2.9 million remaining video customers left. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

“This multi-year agreement with Cox is a significant milestone for Diamond’s go-forward business as we continue to execute the steps necessary to complete our reorganization. We are pleased to continue partnering with Cox to provide high quality local sports broadcasts to passionate fans," said David Preschlack, CEO of Diamond, in a statement. 

Suzanne Fenwick, Senior Vice President, content acquisition for Cox Communications, added: “We are delighted that we could find a reasonable path to extend our partnership with Diamond Sports. We look forward to continuing to deliver regional sports content to our subscribers.”

You can read the full press release here. 

Diamond, a subsidiary set up by Sinclair Broadcast Group to operate the Ball Sports local cable channels, could emerge from a lengthy bankruptcy process at a hearing set for June 18. 

In order for that to happen, its creditors and league partners will need to see that it's pay TV contracts are all renewed. 

In addition to DirecTV, Diamond announced that it had re-upped with Charter earlier this month. 

With Comcast shifting regional sports networks to more expensive tiers recently, negotiations probably aren't going to be easy. 

Perhaps a good omen for Diamond's Comcast negotiations: Cox is renewing Bally Sports channels on its Contour TV Preferred and Contour TV Ultimate platforms. Both video systems rest on technology platforms developed and maintained by Comcast. 

Nexstar Media Group said it reached a new multiyear distribution agreement on Cox Communications cable systems.

The agreement covers retransmission consent for 38 Nexstar-owned TV stations in 23 markets. 

It also covers digital broadcast networks Antenna TV and Rewind TV and cable news network NewsNation.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Nexstar had a three-month blackout before reaching a carriage agreement with DirecTV in September.

Five years after the top U.S. cable companies, Comcast and Charter Communications, successfully launched in-footprint mobile services combining wholesale MVNO access to Verizon's wireless network with their own respective robust Wi-Fi hotspot networks, privately held Cox Communications is also getting into the mobile biz with a very similar playbook. 

Announced at CES 2023 in Las Vegas this week, Cox Mobile will deploy across Cox's national footprint of around 5.6 million U.S. broadband subscribers across 18 states.

Cox Mobile will rely on a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement with wireless giant Verizon, just as Comcast and Charter's respective Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile do. 

And just like those aforementioned services, Cox Mobile will seek to offload as much traffic as it can to Cox's network of more than 4 million Wi-Fi hotspots. 

Pricing will also be similar to Comcast and Charter, which jointly manage their respective mobile services with combined backend resources and network planning. Cox Mobile will offer an unlimited plan at $45 a month, or users can go "by the gig" at $15 per gigabyte of monthly digital usage. 

The national deployment, which will see a marketing ramp-up amid next month's Super Bowl broadcast, was preceded by a soft launch last year in Las Vegas, Omaha and Hampton Roads, Va. 

Cox Mobile is only offering Samsung phones at this point. On the service's new landing page, Cox is offering a $350 price break on the Samsung Galaxy S22, which regularly runs $799.99 to $1,199.99, depending on the configuration. 

"The convergence of wired and mobile communications has never been more important. Customers recognize Cox as a reliable provider of connectivity, so introducing a mobile phone offering was a natural extension of our services," said Mark Greatrex, president of Cox Communications, in a statement "With Cox Mobile, we are offering new mobile phone options for consumers; ones that offer flexibility, reliability and the opportunity to save money."

Make no mistake, the No. 3 U.S. MSO is late to the cable mobile party, which is now the fastest growing segment of the mature U.S. wireless business.

Comcast launched Xfinity Mobile in April 2017. It announced in October that it had exceeded 5 million lines of service. 

Charter launched Spectrum Mobile in September 2018 and now has more than 4.7 million service lines. 

The No. 4 U.S. cable operator, Altice USA, got into the mobile business in 2019 via an MVNO agreement with Sprint (now T-Mobile). 

Even the more than 700 small cable companies represented by the National Content and Technology Cooperative (NCTC) might soon have access to a master MVNO deal. 

“It’s become such a focal point. It’s the thing everybody seems to think is what you need to have,” NCTC President Lou Borrelli told CNBC. “I’ve seen it referred to as the new bundle. I don’t dispute that.” 

Notably, Cox tried to enter the mobile business once before. It shuttered a fledgling attempt back in 2011, claiming its MVNO deal to use Sprint's 3G network couldn't keep up with the 4G competition, and that it couldn't establish licensing deals for "iconic devices" like Apple's iPhone. 

Based on that prior relationship with Sprint, T-Mobile sued Cox in October 2021 when it soft-launched its latest mobile efforts, claiming it should be the exclusive Cox Mobile MVNO partner and not Verizon. However, a Delaware court ruled in favor of the cable operator last March. 

 The Cable Center said Wednesday that it has named two former cable executives — the late Bill Daniels and retired Cox Communications CEO Patrick Esser — as recipients of its 2021 and 2022 Bresnan Ethics in Business Award.

The award recognizes the late William J. Bresnan, founder and chairman of Bresnan Communications and longtime chairman of the board of The Cable Center. The award will be presented at the 25th annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration, September 15 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York.

"Bill and Pat’s commitment to the creation and growth of the cable industry, as well as their history of supporting innumerable philanthropic endeavors is truly inspirational," The Cable Center president and CEO Diane Christman said in a press release. "We are delighted to honor them with the Bresnan Award."

Daniels, who died in 2000, is the 2020 Bresnan awardee and was an early pioneer in the cable industry. He started out building cable systems in the western part of the country, later forming Daniels & Associates, which became the consummate cable broker, facilitating many deals that shaped the cable business. He also was an active philanthropist,  providing significant support to innovative education efforts. He founded Young Americans Bank in 1987, the world's only bank exclusively for kids, and made substantial donations to the University of Denver to incorporate ethics, values, and personal integrity into the business school curriculum. The business school was later renamed the Daniels College of Business in his honor.

Daniels spent his final years laying plans for the Daniels Fund, which is now one of the largest foundations in the Rocky Mountain region, continuing his legacy of compassion and generosity across Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through grants, scholarships, and an ethics initiative.

"On behalf of the Daniels Fund, I am honored to accept this award for Bill Daniels," Daniels Fund president and CEO Hanna Skandera said in a press release. "He would have been extremely proud to receive this recognition along with Pat. He dedicated his life to the cable industry and to giving back to his community. His commitment to ethics and to being a steward of the next generation of leaders was unrivaled and we continue to see the impact of that commitment today."

Esser retired in 2021 after 15 years as CEO of Cox. A 42-year veteran of the company — he joined Cox in 1979 — during his tenure as CEO, Cox earned many accolades for celebrating its diverse people, suppliers, communities, products and the characteristics that make each one unique. Esser has personally been recognized with several industry awards including the Cable Advertising Bureau’s President’s Award, NCTA’s Vanguard Award for Leadership, Multichannel News’ Executive of the Year, NAMIC’s Living Legend Award and Hall of Fame inductions by both The Cable Center and Broadcasting+Cable

Also: Cable Industry Execs Salute Cox’s Patrick Esser

Esser currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of C-SPAN as well as a national Trustee and member of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He also served many years on both the board of CableLabs and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

“I am thrilled to accept the Bresnan Award,” Esser said in a press release. “Bill Bresnan was not only a mentor, but also a friend, and I greatly admired his passion for our industry and to doing what is right in today’s business world. I am humbled to be named this year’s award recipient and I am thrilled to be recognized alongside Bill Daniels.”

The Bresnan Ethics in Business Award was created to honor outstanding men and women in the cable industry who best exemplify Bill Bresnan’s long-standing commitment to ethics in business, and demonstrating societal, community, and philanthropic engagement.

“Bill and Pat have been two of the most passionate and innovative members of our industry. Their dedication to people and philanthropy exemplifies what the Bresnan Award is all about,” Michael Willner, chairman and CEO of Penthera Partners and chairman of The Cable Center’s board of directors, said in a press release. “Pat has shown outstanding leadership at the helm of Cox Communications and his dedication to our industry and to supporting his community is extraordinary. Bill helped found the cable industry and his entrepreneurial spirit was at the core of its growth and success. We are honored to recognize both Bill and Pat.” ▪️

Tomorrow (March 9), lawyers for Cox Communications will begin oral arguments in the appeal of a $1 billion copyright infringement award that it says is not only wrong on a legal basis, but could upend the entire broadband industry if it is allowed to stay. 

A Virginia federal court awarded 53 music publishers, including Sony Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and others, $1 billion in December 2019, agreeing with claims that despite complaints and warnings from the music publishers, Cox continued to allow its broadband subscribers to illegally download music. All in all the publishers found 10,017 instances of infringement by Cox customers, and a jury assigned a value of $99,830.29 to each one, for a total of $1 billion. 

Cox immediately appealed the decision, but that was rejected by another federal court in Virginia in June 2021, which upheld the verdict. The latest appeal is before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, with oral arguments set for March 9. A decision is expected sometime this spring.

Cox had originally hoped that it would be protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law that protects internet-service providers from liability for content that its subscribers put on the web. An earlier court ruled that Cox wasn’t protected by the DMCA because it didn’t terminate enough customers who had been accused of the infringement. According to court filings, the DMCA requires ISPs to terminate subscribers that repeatedly infringe copyrights under appropriate circumstances. 

The suit centered around about 58,000 of Cox’s estimated 6 million broadband customers who, according to the publishers, were suspected of downloading copyrighted material without permission. The plaintiffs claim they sent Cox about 163,000 notices concerning those subscribers (about 2.8 notices for each customer) regarding 10,017 individual sound recordings and compositions over Cox’s network. .

Other MSOs in Crosshairs

 Cox isn’t the only cable ISP facing a potentially crippling lawsuit regarding illegal downloading of content. In August, Sony Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and their subsidiaries sued Charter Communications in U.S. District Court in Colorado, claiming the cable company failed to terminate “tens of thousands” of subscribers who were allegedly downloading music illegally, and claimed the company profited from those downloads by selling higher speeds of service. Last June, the record labels sued Frontier Communications, claiming similar copyright violations. 

While Cox doesn’t deny that some of its broadband subscribers illegally downloaded music during the period in question, it does take issue with the extent of the punishment — about $100,000 per song that typically retails for $1 each — and the idea that ISPs are supposed to immediately disconnect subscribers at the mere hint they are downloading something they aren’t supposed to. 

The Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that represents record labels and distributors in the music business and who in 2019 said the original verdict sent a message to ISPs concerning their obligations to stop piracy, declined to comment on the appeal.

But in a brief filed in June, attorneys for the plaintiff record companies said the court had already correctly determined that Cox repeatedly allowed copyright infringers to remain on the service, creating a “safe haven” for them as the company collected millions of dollars in fees for broadband service. 

“During the time period at issue here, Cox terminated over 600,000 subscribers for not paying their bill,” the plaintiffs said in the filing. “It terminated 32 for copyright infringement.”

While Cox has argued that it has no financial incentive to allow its customers to illegally download copyrighted material — it charges the same amount no matter the usage — the record companies argued that music pirates tend to subscribe to higher-speed service, which does carry a higher retail price. 

“By not terminating known repeat infringers, Cox received subscription revenues it would not have otherwise obtained, and avoided costs it would have otherwise incurred,” the plaintiffs wrote. They pointed to one Cox residential customer who was the subject of more than 100 infringement notices and was billed $8,594 between February 2013 through 2016, after Cox received at least 13 infringement notices for that subscriber. The plaintiffs also claimed that two Cox Business customers were billed $706,434 and $12,525, respectively, after receiving 13 infringement notices. 

“Between February 2013 and December 2016, Cox received $208 million in revenue from subscribers caught infringing three or more times,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Cox thus demonstrably and consistently prioritized cash over copyright.”

According to Cox’s arguments, it had issued warnings to subscribers that they were illegally downloading music in three phases. In phase one, Cox sent subscribers automated email warnings concerning the complaint that they were illegally downloading music, demanding removal of any material that infringed on copyrights, and providing educational resources on infringement. Cox’s Abuse Tracking System (CATS) repeated the warnings after the cable operator received a second notice of infringement and repeated them again for the next five notices. Those warnings ended the infringement 78% of the time, Cox said in court filings. 

If that wasn’t enough, Cox moved to the second phase, automatic suspension of internet service. According to the filings, Cox suspended thousands of subscribers during the period and refused to restore service until the subscriber promised to stop the infringement, either via an online form or, if the violations continued, in a conversation with Cox investigators who would determine how the infringement started, and how it could be stopped. According to Cox, phase 2 increased the success rate to 95%. 

Phase three was termination, a measure that Cox said it rarely had to resort to. According to the filing, Cox determined a few dozen customers — out of about 6 million total broadband subscribers — were terminated in 2013 and 2014. “[U]ltimately, the only accounts that continued to rack up more and more notices were all business accounts or regional ISPs, termination of which would have carried especially devastating consequences,” Cox said in the filing. 

Cox tried to have the $1 billion award reduced in 2021, but was rejected by the court in June. But the company, in its latest appeal, tells the court that upholding the verdict will have a devastating effect on the broadband industry as a whole.

ISPs Left Exposed

“It would effectively make ISPs strictly liable for every act of infringement on the internet, from downloads to social media posts,” Cox said in the filing. “And given the threat of crushing liability, ISPs would have no choice but to terminate subscribers the moment they are accused of a single infringement, stranding countless subscribers in an internet exile.”

Other ISPs believe so as well. At least four amicus briefs were filed with the court in favor of Cox’s position, by 17 distinguished university intellectual property law professors and industry organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and The Internet Association (which represents 40 leading tech companies). All said upholding the ruling would result in massive terminations of internet subscribers. 

“Consumers, whether they personally engage in infringing conduct or not, could be subject to wholesale termination of their internet access based on unproven allegations of infringement occurring at the IP address through which they connect to the internet,” the law professors said in their brief. “And entities through which multiple users connect to the internet via a single IP address could lose internet access entirely due to alleged infringement by a single user.”

They argued that Cox did not receive any benefit from allowing the illegal downloads — it got paid a flat monthly for service either way — which is a key part of the law. According to the professors’ brief, in order for Cox to benefit from the illegal activity, the “infringing activity must constitute a draw for subscribers.“

“But no evidence on the record shows that customers purchased Cox’s internet service because of the ability to infringe,” the brief continued. 

And terminating one individual because of a single act of infringement, or just the suspicion of such an act, could mean that every member of a household loses service. 

“The harm of cutting off an entity, in this case, could greatly outweigh the harm of a single infringing act,” the brief said. “And because 40% of Americans have only one option for broadband internet service, being terminated by one provider is not just an inconvenience, but can mean the loss of internet access altogether.”

With broadband subscriber growth dwindling, and cable companies relying more and more on broadband service to survive, the outcome of the case could have a chilling effect on the industry. With the federal government pumping billions of dollars into programs to encourage expansion of broadband service to rural areas, the 4th Circuit may well hold the fate of high-speed internet connections for all in its hands. ■

Cox Communications kicked off the New Year by promoting three long-time executives — Len Barlik, Colleen Langner and Mark Lawson —  to key management roles, the company said Wednesday.

Barlik, formerly executive VP and chief operations officer, has been named chief technology officer, succeeding Kevin Hart, who was named CEO of Cox-owned fiber provider Segra earlier this week. Langner, who has previously served as EVP and chief marketing and sales officer, becomes chief operating officer; and Lawson, formerly senior VP of digital, moves into the executive VP and chief marketing and sales officer role. 

Barlik joined Cox in 2010 as EVP of product development and management and during that tenure helped launch the company’s flagship video product Contour, its ultra-high-speed broadband product Gigablast and its Homelife home security and automation portfolio. As CTO, Barlik will oversee product and technology innovation and the development of new products and services for both residential and commercial customers. He will also assume leadership of the Cox Network Transformation initiative, the company’s billion-dollar project to support future residential and business applications.  

“Len is a true innovator with a proven track record of bringing compelling new products and services to market that deliver superior customer experiences and drive revenue growth,” Cox Communications CEO Mark Greatrex said in a press release. “His ability to take a long-range, strategic vision, create a sense of urgency and move organizations to deliver on strategy makes him the natural choice to shape the future of product and technology development at Cox.”

A 26-year veteran of Cox Communications, Langner has held several senior leadership roles in the company, including SVP of field operations, with overall responsibility for field operations and vendor management. Langner also led marketing operations for the company, where she drove residential marketing strategy and execution nationwide. 

“Colleen built an intimate knowledge of our markets, our customers and what it takes to support the services we sell,” Greatrex said in the release. “Her leadership experience across our regions gives her great perspective and a well-rounded view of our business that serves our Senior Team well.”

Lawson joined Cox Communications about eight years ago, leading the company’s digital marketing and helping to digitize sales, customer care and, more recently, customer retention and base management. 

“We are moving rapidly to more digital customer journeys and interactive services and Mark is a top-notch digital expert who already has helped us blaze trails in the digital realm,” Greatrex said in the release. “He will be a tremendous asset to our senior leadership team, lending his digital vision and expertise to our growth and business strategy.”

The Africa Channel has gained additional linear distribution across all Cox Communications systems as part of a recent carriage agreement between the two companies.

The deal gives the service — which offers pan-African content to U.S. audiences — access to Cox’s Contour TV subscribers in Las Vegas, New Orleans, Phoenix, San Diego, Cleveland and Norfolk/Hampton Roads, Virginia, said the network.

The Cox agreement follows recent carriage deals with Charter Communications and Comcast that put The Africa Channel in front of 11 million subscribers, the network said. 

Also: BNC Inks Carriage Deal with Cox Communications 

”This is a particularly exciting time for us at The Africa Channel which, despite prevailing trends in the industry where audiences appear to be cutting the cord in favor of OTT and digital streaming options, has seen impressive growth in interest, viewership, and distribution in our traditional broadcast offering,“ The Africa Channel executive VP and general manager Narendra Reddy said in a statement. “We attribute this success to our belief, now supported by a growing number of studies which show that diverse, multicultural and niche audiences who mainstream media have often ignored will gravitate towards platforms, traditional or otherwise, when the content is customized to their unique viewing needs. ■

Cox Enterprises, parent of Cox Communications, said it has named CEO Alex Taylor chairman, effective January 1. Current chairman James Kennedy moves to the role of chairman emeritus and will remain a member of the board.

"No one cares more about the well-being of our company and employees than Alex," Kennedy said in a press release. "I know the time is now right for him to take on this level of leadership. I'm so proud of all he has done since joining Cox more than 20 years ago. I'm especially proud of what he's done since becoming president and CEO in January 2018." 

Since becoming CEO, Taylor, the great-grandson of Cox Enterprises founder James Cox, has led the company's core operating businesses in broadband, automotive services and media through significant transformation, including selling a majority stake in its Cox Media television stations to Apollo Global Management in 2019. 

"It's a humbling honor to follow someone who has been so successful and good at what he does," Taylor said in a press release. "Jim and I have worked together for many years to carry on the legacy of caring for our family, our employees and the communities which we serve. I will be focused on that for the entirety of my career." 

In addition to Taylor’s elevation to chairman, Cox Enterprises said that effective January 1 former Cox Communications COO and Cox Enterprises EVP Jill Campbell will become co-president and chief people and operations officer of the parent company.  Cox Automotive EVP and CFO Dallas Clement will become Cox Enterprises co-president and chief financial officer at the same time.  

"Both Jill and Dallas have served Cox for more than 30 years and each have long lists of ways they've helped grow our company," Taylor said in a press release. "Their careers have impacted thousands of people. Cox is better in countless ways because of their leadership. I thank them for their ongoing contributions and the forward-thinking approach they take to our people and businesses." 

Campbell leads Cox Enterprises' people solutions, security, talent acquisition, corporate affairs, inclusion and diversity and branding, marketing and creative departments. She previously served as chief operations officer of Cox Communications and as EVP of Cox Enterprises. 

Clement is responsible for the Cox Enterprises' treasury, financial reporting and control, tax, audit, strategy and corporate development, and financial planning and analysis functions. He also oversees sustainability operations, information technology, risk management, government affairs and legal.  ■  

Black News Channel will be available to Contour TV subscribers as part of a carriage agreement between the news network and Cox Communications. 

The deal calls for BNC to be in front of millions of Cox Communications' subscribers across 18 states, although specific details were not disclosed. Cox joins Comcast, DirecTV, Charter/Spectrum, Dish and Verizon Fios in carrying the service, which offers programming dedicated to covering the unique perspectives, challenges and successes of Black and Brown communities. 

"We are pleased to reach this important distribution agreement with Cox Communications and continue BNC's expansion," said BNC CEO Princell Hair in a statement. "BNC's culturally-specific news and stories are filling a void in our news landscape that has existed for too long and provides opportunities for our partners to connect with Black and Brown communities that we super serve on a daily basis." ■ 

Cox Communications said it has completed its purchase of the commercial services segment of Charlotte, North Carolina-based fiber infrastructure provider Segra. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but some published reports estimated it was worth about $3 billion. 

Segra serves commercial enterprise and carrier customers in nine states in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions of the country. Cox first announced the deal in April. 

Although Cox did not disclose the price, the company said the deal was one of the largest in its history and supports an ongoing focus on strategic infrastructure investments and continued commitment to the business services market. Bloomberg said back in April that it could be worth more than $3 billion, including assumed debt. 

“Cox has invested more than $15 billion in its communities through infrastructure upgrades in the last decade and acquiring Segra's commercial services business underscores our commitment to continue to make big bets in the business services space,” said Cox incoming president Mark Greatrex in a press release. “An expanded geographical presence, greater network capacity and more services will be an immediate benefit for customers of both companies and will better enable us to meet the significant demand for our solutions.”

Segra's existing management team will continue to lead the Segra enterprise and carrier organization following the acquisition, will retain the Segra brand and operate as a standalone business within the Cox family of companies.

“Segra’s primary focus will continue to be on serving our customers,” Segra CEO  Timothy Biltz said in a press release. “Our dedicated team of employees is our most important resource. Through them, we deliver a superior customer experience and demonstrate the value of our state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure. We’ll continue to invest in our employees and our world-class network in order to exceed our customer’s expectations. Joining Cox strengthens our ability to meet the growing demand for our products and services, which are mission critical to our customers. The Segra and Cox teams have been working diligently together to plan for a successful day one and beyond.”

Cox Communications said it has promoted Colleen Langner to executive VP and chief marketing and sales officer and Jeff Breaux to executive VP of Cox Business. Both will report to incoming president Mark Greatrex, who is scheduled to replace the retiring president Patrick Esser at the end of the year. 

Langner, a 2017 Multichannel News Wonder Woman, was previously senior VP of field operations for Cox, and in her new role succeeds Greatrex who held the position for a decade. Langner has more than two decades of experience leading marketing and sales teams at the regional and national levels and in her new role will be responsible for leading the company’s residential sales team and marketing activities.

Breaux has been with Cox Business for more than seven years, most recently as senior VP of sales. In his new position he will oversee Cox Business’s commercial solutions portfolio, including sales, operations, customer experience, product development and marketing for business customers, wholesale services for telecom carriers, as well as investment and acquisition of related B2B adjacent businesses.

“Colleen and Jeff have both proven themselves as extremely talented leaders who drive competitive results and motivate and inspire others around them,” Greatrex said in a statement. “With these two exemplary additions, our Cox senior leadership team is now in place. I’m ready to hit the ground running with this amazing group. I have the utmost confidence in their leadership abilities to make our plan and use our products and services to create increasingly important connections for residential and business customers.”

Altice USA chief operating officer Hakim Boubazine‘s decision to resign from the company last week had some media analysts searching for hidden meaning, with Bernstein’s Peter Supino doubting that CEO Dexter Goei, who will take over Boubazine’s duties, can right the ship while concluding the company, often seen as a takeover target, is undervalued.

Boubazine, who has run several businesses for Altice N.V. founder and chairman Patrick Drahi over the years, and joined Altice USA shortly after Drahi first entered the U.S. cable market in 2015, resigned unexpectedly on Sept. 9, agreeing to stay on in an advisory role through the end of the year. In a press release, Altice USA said Goei will assume Boubazine’s duties, in addition to his own as CEO, immediately. 

In a research note, Supino wrote that Boubazine’s departure is significant because he ran so many parts of the business. According to its website, Boubazine was in charge of product, marketing, technology, engineering, and operations functions as COO. His departure also comes at a time when Altice USA has “badly underperformed” its peers, according to Supino, adding just 8,000 organic broadband customers over the past three quarters. 

“Operational trouble seems to run deeper,” Supino wrote, adding that analysts’ consensus cash flow forecasts for Altice USA began declining in 2018, and in the second half of 2019, the company struggled with its OSS/BSS transition and the launch of its wireless service, Altice Mobile. 

Supino also saw problems with Altice USA’s marketing decisions, adding that he found it “odd” that the company focused on price maximization in 2019 through the roll out of its “Price for life’” campaign.

More recently, the company decided to rebrand Suddenlink as Optimum because ”(in our assessment) Suddenlink is loathed by too many consumers and not because Optimum is known to any of them,” Supino wrote.  

Adding to the pressure is that Altice USA stock is down about 24% year-to-date, and there are some doubts as to how effective Goei, an investment banker by training, will be in running the telecom side of the business.

“With roots in investment banking, we are not convinced that Goei has the background to solve Altice’s operational problems,” Supino wrote. But the analyst still recommended the stock, not necessarily because he sees a turnaround — although he called Goei an “energetic leader with an enormous stake in the company” — but because he expects Altice USA to be a takeover target. 

“While our most important 2H21 estimates remain below consensus, we continue to recommend ATUS because we believe the business is structurally sound, under-valued, and strategically appealing to several larger, acquisitive companies,” Supino wrote.

Altice USA has been tossed around as a potential takeover target ever since it came on the scene. With attractive assets in the New York metro area — mainly the Bronx, Staten Island and New Jersey and Connecticut systems it purchased from Cablevision Systems in 2016 — Altice USA could fit well with Charter Communications and Comcast, each of which have substantial assets in those markets. Suddenlink systems in the Midwest could be seen as attractive to operators like Cox Communications and Cable One.

In a research note earlier this month, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett made the case for taking Altice USA private, pointing to its declining share price and undervalued assets. In that report Moffett opined that Altice USA could sell off its Suddenlink systems for around $22.7 billion and take its Optimum unit private for about $10.8 billion. 

So far Altice USA has been a buyer not a seller, doing mainly small deals like its purchase of Service Electric Cable of NJ in July 2020 for $150 million, and its April buy of North Carolina fiber company Morris Communications for $310 million. 

Also Read: Altice and Cogeco: He’s Just Not That Into You 

Last year Altice USA made its biggest M&A splash, teaming up with Rogers Communications in an $8 billion bid for Canadian operator Cogeco Communications and its U.S. cable unit Atlantic Broadband. That bid, where Altice would acquire Atlantic Broadband and Rogers would take the rest, was soundly rejected by Cogeco, and the unsolicited bid was abandoned in November 2020. 

Influential media analyst Craig Moffett took a deep dive into Altice USA Wednesday, issuing a 39-page report that says with broadband growth behind its peers and doubts that its rural markets can take up the slack, one way to unlock its value would be to take the company private. 

Altice USA stock has been battered over the past few months, dropping more than 20% since July 28 when it released Q2 results that showed zero broadband subscriber growth at a time when its larger peers are watching their high-speed data rolls rise. In his report, Moffett, principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, noted that despite that sluggish performance, Altice USA’s sum-of-the-parts valuation indicates that Wall Street perhaps has the cable company all wrong. 

While Moffett admitted that Altice USA has a “broadband pricing problem,” that there is some doubt that efforts to boost broadband customers in its more rural Suddenlink footprint will offset subscriber declines in its more metropolitan Optimum footprint, even conservative valuations of its four major geographies indicate a much higher value for the company than Wall Street has assigned. 

“There’s a price for everything … and, to put it bluntly, this ain’t it,” Moffett wrote. “Altice’s current valuation is simply too cheap, and by a huge margin.”

The notion of going private at latest appeared to be attractive to some investors. Altice USA shares were up nearly 4% ($1.05 each) in early trading Sept. 8 to $28.19 per share. The stock was priced at $27.94 at 12:57 p.m. Wednesday, up 3% or 81 cents each.

Given the high valuations for recent private cable deals, including Altice’s own  purchase of Service Electric Cable of NJ  (10 times consensus cash flow) and its March  agreement to buy North Carolina broadband provider Morris Broadband (24 times), Moffett assigned an 11.7 times multiple to Suddenlink, a 10.1x  multiple to legacy Optimum systems and a 14.6 times multiple to its Lightpath division, pushing the combined company’s estimated trading multiple to 10.8 times forward looking cash flow. At that multiple, Moffett estimated that Altice USA stock should be priced at $51 per share, nearly double its Sept. 7 close of $27.25 each. 

Moffett added that to take Altice USA private, the company would have to pay a premium to its current stock price, but at $30, $35, $40 or even $45 per share, that option would appear to be a bargain.

Going private is nothing new for cable operators, and usually is driven by the perception that the public market is severely undervaluing assets. Mediacom Communications was the last major publicly traded cable operator to go private in 2011, and has had tremendous success as a private company. In 2004, Cox Communications went private in a deal valued at $8.5 billion, and hasn’t looked back since. 

The analyst added that in one scenario, Altice USA could sell off its Suddenlink division at an 11.7 times multiple (implying a selling price of $22.7 billion) and Lightpath for 14.6 times cash flow (implying a $1.57 billion sale price), while retaining the Optimum business by purchasing the remaining public float. Moffett estimated that at a $35 per share take out price and the sale of Suddenlink and Lightpath, Altice USA could take itself private — debt free — for about $7.9 billion. At $45 per share, the total cost would rise to $10.3 billion.

Moffett stressed that going private is not something he is suggesting that Altice USA will do, but is something they could do. And there are also several possible iterations of the going private option, he wrote.

“The takeaway here is that, even with a meaningful premium, the current valuation is so  cheap that it creates enormous optionality,” Moffett wrote, adding that Altice USA has been doing its own “modified take-private” for years.

Moffett noted that since separating from Altice N.V. in 2018, Altice USA has made about $7.7 billion in share repurchases, reducing its total shares outstanding by about 38%. Excluding the ownership stake held by Altice N.V. chairman Patrick Drahi, and Altice USA has reduced  its public float by more than half.   

“Indeed, it may be the case that Drahi would conclude that it is more attractive to simply stay the course and retire shares until the remaining float is so small that almost any premium paid to complete the job would be financially immaterial,” Moffett wrote. He estimated that Altice USA, if it maintains its leverage target of 4.5 times to 5 times cash flow, would buy back about $8.5 billion of its stock through 2025.

“Altice could go private, sell select assets — we highlighted Suddenlink just because we suspect it would be so easy to sell — and own what's left for... well, for nothing at all,” Moffett continued. 

As the now tropical depression Ida makes its weakened way northward, cable operators with systems in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama continue to assess the damage from the storm, which made landfall as a category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29, causing widespread flooding and costing at least four lives in the area.

Hurricane Ida made landfall late Sunday morning near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, packing sustained winds of up to 150 mph and torrential rains that caused widespread flooding. About 1 million homes in Louisiana are without power for “the foreseeable future,” according to some reports. 

According to website PowerOutage.us, more than 1 million homes in Louisiana and nearly 45,000 homes in Mississippi were without power on Tuesday. While many Louisiana residents fled the state prior to the storm, Gov. John Bel Edwards urged them to stay away until power could be restored. In addition to the flooding and property damage in the aftermath of the hurricane, a punishing heatwave has gripped southeast Louisiana, making an already dangerous situation even more so. 

According to the New York Times, at a press conference earlier today, Gov. Bel Edwards urged residents who have left the state to stay away "until the office of emergency preparedness tells you it's ready to receive you."

For cable operators, the first stage is in assessing the damage to plant and equipment, which at the time appears to be minimal. While many customers are without service because of power outages, most operators have set up WiFi hotspots in public locations to help residents stay connected with family, friends and emergency personnel. 

Cox Communications has the largest exposure in New Orleans, which was hit hard by the storm and subsequent flooding. Cox personnel are assessing the damage in the city and have dispatched additional personnel from across the country to provide assistance. 

Also Read: Hurricane Ida Takes Toll on Broadcasting, Cable 

Cox spokesman Todd Smith said in an email message that the assessment process began on Monday, which requires visually inspecting thousands of miles of plant and pieces of equipment below, on, or above the ground near power lines. Hundreds of personnel have arrived in southern Louisiana to help in the restoration efforts and as of Tuesday, repair work has been completed on the fiber backbone near Donaldsonville in Baton Rouge and repairs to two critical network facilities in St. Charles Parish near New Orleans continue.  

"The safety of our employees and customers is our first concern," Smith continued in an email message. "Despite the fact that many Cox employees had evacuated outside of the Louisiana area and cell service is compromised, all teammates are safe and accounted for at this time."

Charter Communications, which has a limited footprint in Louisiana, said its systems in Hammond, Slidell and Thibodaux were hit hardest, while its operation in Opelousas, toward the center of the state, is largely business as usual. 

“Given the massive loss of power to local residents, businesses and to our network, the number of impacted customers is changing continuously,” Charter spokesman Rich Ruggiero said in an email message. “We have teams in the field assessing damage to our fiber-optic network in areas where it has been deemed safe for us to do so, though there remain many areas we cannot access yet due to flooding, impassable roads and downed power lines.”

At Comcast, which has customers in Houma and La Place, Louisiana that were impacted by the hurricane, spokeswoman Jenni Moyer said the company is assessing damage, although power outages, flooding and debris are still blocking access to some key locations.

“Most of the service interruptions are due to commercial power outages. For the majority of our customers, services should return after power is restored, and access to damaged facilities and downed lines has been cleared,” Moyer said in an email. 

Moyer said Comcast is making its Xfinity WiFi hotspots available for free to help residents and emergency personnel stay connected throughout Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. The service is available to non-Xfinity customers in those impacted areas as well and Comcast said it is directing people to its homepage and Twitter handle (@ComcastSouth) for regular updates and to learn more about its WiFi hotspots. 

Cable One spokeswoman Patricia Niemann said that all of her company’s associates in the impacted areas are safe and accounted for, although five experienced damage to their homes. Those employees will be able to tap into a Natural Disaster Fund that was first established during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and later used during the 2011 Joplin, Missouri  tornado and Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana in 2017, to ensure they receive financial assistance to make repairs to their damaged homes. 

Niemann said that Cable One service is nearly 98% restored through its impacted service territory. The hardest hit system was in Belle Chasse, Louisiana (located near New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish). Local officials there say power will not be restored for several weeks. 

Smaller operators affected by the storm can also access and share information through industry group ACA Connects. In a message to its membership Monday,  ACA Connects CEO Matt Polka said ACA is there to help operators find important industry connections and links to resources via its members lounge at its website.

“At times like these, I recognize you may most need help with finding crews to rebuild, getting needed supplies, or jumping in to meet community priorities,” Polka wrote. “Please don’t ever hesitate to call on us if we CAN endeavor to help connect you with emergency response resources on the ground that may be able to assist you in any of these ways!” 

Cox Communications said Friday that it has promoted Suzanne Fenwick to senior vice  president of content acquisition, succeeding chief content strategist Andy Albert  when he retires at the end of the year after 25 years with the company.

In her new role Fenwick will oversee all video programming provider relationships and content acquisition, including the negotiation of program carriage agreements with major content producers. She will also help set the company’s long term video content and distribution strategy including streaming, On Demand and diverse programming.

Fenwick has two decades of experience in the cable industry, and has served as vice president on the content acquisition team, led negotiations for all major cable network deals and negotiated new media content rights related to TV Everywhere, Video On Demand and advertising. This position will be backfilled and report to Fenwick and the company said she is actively seeking internal and external candidates.

Prior to her focus on the content side of the business, Fenwick served as executive director of corporate development and mergers and acquisitions where she managed the acquisition and sale of Travel Channel, the sale of past wireless spectrum and tower assets and the company’s going-private transaction in xx. She also served a stint as vice president of finance for Cox Business, the commercial services division and fastest growing segment of Cox Communications.

“Suzanne has been in the middle of many of our most strategic negotiations in her career and has the experience and the thoughtful approach to lead our content team into the rapidly evolving future,” EVP and chief financial officer Perley McBride said in a press release.

Cox Communications CEO Patrick Esser’s decision to retire at the end of the year — he will be succeeded by company veteran Mark Greatrex — was met throughout the industry with equal parts regret at losing yet another of cable’s old guard and good wishes that one of the good guys gets to end his decades-long cable story on his own terms. 

Esser got his start in the cable business in 1979 as a pole climber for a small cable operator in Waterloo, Iowa. According to an interview he did with this reporter back in 2013 after receiving the industry’s highest honor — the Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership — Esser packed up his belongings and drove 1,000 miles to Hampton Roads, Virginia, the site of Cox's latest system buy. The catalyst? One of his sales managers in the Waterloo system was a former Cox employee who couldn’t stop talking about what a great company it was to work for. The then 20-something Esser decided to see for himself.  

“I knocked on the door of the cable system and I got a job as the public-access director,” Esser said at the time. “Everything I heard about Cox was true from the moment I stepped on the property.”

Esser’s first job at Cox was officially director of programming at the Hampton Roads system, and he was part of the management team that pioneered Cox’s advertising sales division now known as Cox Media. In 1991 he was named corporate vice president of advertising sales, rising to vice president of operations for Cox’s Western Division in 1999. A  year later he was promoted to senior vice president of operations and in 2004, Esser was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer.

In 2006, Esser was tapped to succeed CEO James Robbins, who had said earlier that he would retire that year. Robbins, who died in 2007,  said in a July 2005 interview he couldn’t have hoped for a better person to take the reins.

“Pat has absolutely been the home-run selection,” Robbins said in that July 2005 interview. 

Esser didn’t just have an impact on his own company. While he spearheaded and pushed along efforts to diversify Cox’s workforce and bring the company into the information age, he also enthusiastically waved the cable banner wherever he went. Throughout the years he served as chairman of  NCTA: The Internet & Television Association;  C-SPAN; CableLabs; adviser to the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) and on the national Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

“Pat Esser’s contribution to our industry has been invaluable,” said NCTA: The Internet and Television Association CEO Michael Powell in a statement. “He’s a true cable success story, rising through the ranks from local executive to company CEO. Throughout, he has represented the heart and soul of our industry, always committed first to the welfare of Cox customers and employees.”

Through his journey throughout the industry, Esser has worked closely with other cable and telecom CEOs. He serves on C-SPAN’s board with Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge and has served with Mediacom Communications founder, chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso on the C-SPAN and NCTA boards. 

“Pat’s had a great career starting at entry level and rising to the top,” Rutledge said in a statement. “I’ve enjoyed working aside him on Industry efforts at NCTA and CableLabs.  Pat’s contribution to the industry is unmatched.  I have been personally lucky to work with Pat in an industry where long term business success has kept us on the same team for decades.  It’s been a pleasure.”

National Cable Television Cooperative CEO Lou Borrelli has known Esser for years, dating back to their early days in cable. Borrelli has logged 43 years in the cable business, beginning with UA-Columbia Cablevision in 1978. Borrelli also was a founding partner of Marcus Cable in 1986. 

"I had the good fortune to meet Pat back when our cable careers were getting off the ground," Borrelli said in a statement. "His energy was infectious and his word was his bond. Through numerous CTAM collaborations, Pat never ran out of ideas and always was up to the challenge. His track record at Cox is a testament to his work ethic and his ethics in business and life. Good luck and godspeed."

Esser also helped drive Cox forward as the industry changed, building on its decades-long reputation as the “gold standard” for the cable industry and unafraid to invest in new businesses like broadband.

“During Pat’s 15 years at the helm, Cox Communications became the gold standard of U.S. telecom companies,” Commisso said in a statement. “Through his many operational successes at Cox and his leadership within NCTA, Pat motivated us all to make the significant private investments necessary to turn our collective broadband networks into America’s most powerful technology platform.   I thank him for his tremendous contributions to our industry and wish Pat and his family all the best in the years ahead.” 

Powell also pointed to Esser’s history as a champion of the NCTA, leading its board of directors and trade show several times, and his commitment to diversity, both at Cox and throughout the industry. 

“Pat has been a leader and innovator in cable marketing; a visionary in cable operations and technology; an ally and champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and a thoughtful, forward-looking President & CEO of his company,” Powell continued. “As one of our industry’s most trusted and authentic voices, Pat has immense credibility with policy makers. He has helped provide a strong presence for our industry here in Washington and always has committed Cox Communications to the public good. I will miss Pat enormously as a friend, mentor, and advisor on all of our critical issues. We wish only the very best for him in his next chapter. We’re looking forward to working with Mark Greatrex, another formidable presence in our industry who will be a positive force as we move into the future.”

Esser has served as chairman of C-SPAN for about two years but has been a member of the organization since 2005. The Cox chief has also been a regular video contributor, participating in trade show forums broadcast on the channel ranging from the future of the cable business to Open Internet and consolidation. 

“You can't ask for a better chairman than Pat Esser,” C-SPAN said in a statement. “He is passionate about C-SPAN's mission and shares that enthusiasm throughout Cox. Over the past two years, he has been readily available with strategic guidance and encouragement as our network navigates a changing marketplace and we are confident we can continue to call on his wise counsel into the future.”

In 2006, Cox was first named in DiversityInc's listing of the Top 50 Companies for Diversity and in 2020, reached its highest ranking at No.11. Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) regularly recognizes Cox among the top operators for women.

"Pat Esser is an industry legend — 15 years of exemplary leadership at the helm of Cox and countless beneficiaries of his dedication to the industry and its DEI efforts,” Maria E. Brennan, WICT President & CEO, said in a statement. “We likewise congratulate Pat’s accomplished successor at Cox, Mark Greatrex, and look forward to continuing our strong partnership with the Cox leadership team."

Cox Communications said Monday that long-time president and CEO Patrick Esser will retire effective Dec. 31, after 15 years at the helm. He will be replaced by EVP and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Mark Greatrex who will be named president.

"I've always been fascinated by the cable business and have been fortunate to find a special family-owned company that lives its values," Esser said in a press release. "I'm grateful for the tremendous opportunities I've been given at Cox and the numerous mentors and committed peers that have helped me along this unbelievable ride of a lifetime."

Esser, 64, joined Cox in 1979 as director of programming at its Hampton Roads,  Va., operation and steadily moved up the ranks, being named chief operating officer in 2001.  He became CEO in 2006 after then-CEO James Robbins retired. During Esser’s tenure, Cox has more than doubled its business to become the largest private telecom company in the country, serving nearly seven million homes and businesses across 18 states. 

In addition, Esser serves as chair of the C-SPAN board and on the board of directors of CableLabs and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), i an adviser to the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications and on the national Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

In 2007, Multichannel News named Esser its first "Executive of the Year" and in 2013, he was awarded the distinguished Vanguard Award for Leadership — the industry's highest honor. 

"We are extremely thankful to Pat Esser for his leadership at Cox Communications," said Alex Taylor, president and CEO of Cox Enterprises, Cox Communications’ parent. "He has grown the business consistently over the years. Even more meaningfully he has done it in the right way — by treating people well and making a positive impact in our communities. Pat is an extraordinary leader."

Taylor added that Greatrex, 58, will be "a great leader for the next chapter in Cox Communications' evolution. He is a wonderful executive and person. I have confidence he will continue to grow the business and will continue our commitment to making the company an exemplary corporate citizen."

Greatrex joined Cox in 2011 as chief marketing officer and was promoted to EVP  in 2015. Greatrex helped to develop the Cox brand to highlight its technology and brought to market innovations like Gigablast, Contour TV and Panoramic Wifi. 

Also Read: Setting the Gold Standard

"I am honored to be leading this very special company with a celebrated history, and an exciting future full of optimism and great momentum," Greatrex said in a press release. "We have a winning strategy and I look forward to amplifying the incredible values of the Cox family and the mission to improve the lives of the next generation."

Esser said he is leaving the company in good hands.

“Mark is a strong and visionary leader who will sustain and amplify the momentum he's helped to achieve in the industry,” Esser said in the press release. “His energy, creativity and sharp strategic sensibilities will drive continued innovation, excellence and passion for our customers. I wish him the best as he moves into his new role."

Cox Communications said Tuesday that it has agreed to purchase the commercial enterprise and carrier business of fiber company Segra from private equity company EQT Infrastructure. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although some published reports put the value of the deal at around $3 billion.

Segra, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the largest privately held infrastructure providers in the country. As part of the deal, EQT will retain Segra’s residential and small-to-medium sized business segment in Virginia and North Carolina. Cox will acquire Segra’s commercial services segment, which serves commercial enterprise and carrier customers in nine states in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. 

“Cox is focused on buying and investing where it makes sense, and we believe that the demand for broadband infrastructure will continue to grow, making fiber an attractive area for long-term investment,” said Cox president and CEO Pat Esser in a press release. “Acquiring Segra’s commercial services business is another key milestone in our pursuit of strategic infrastructure to ensure that we're providing the best products and services to our customers.”

Blomberg first reported Monday that Cox and EQT were in talks concerning Segra, estimating that the deal, including assumed debt, would be worth about $3 billion. 

This is the latest in a string of fiber network infrastructure investments Cox has made over the years, including EasyTel,  EdgeConneX, InSite Wireless, StackPath, Unite Private Networks and ViaWest. Once the deal is closed, the enterprise and carrier unit will retain the Segra name and its existing management team, operating as a standalone business within the Cox family of companies. 

“Our relationship with Cox will allow Segra to leverage expert resources, capabilities and strategic insights in order to scale up operations and accelerate long-term growth,” Segra CEO Timothy Biltz said in a press release. “Cox and Segra are equally devoted to the communities we serve. We will be even more strongly positioned to meet growing demand from carrier and enterprise customers for high-bandwidth fiber-infrastructure solutions. I would also like to thank EQT for its continued guidance and invaluable support as we worked to grow the business over the last nearly four years.”

Bank Street Group LLC and Goldman Sachs and Co. LLC acted as financial advisors and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as legal advisor to Segra in connection with the transaction.

Fitch Ratings said debt ratings for Cox Enterprises and Cox Communications would not be affected by the transaction. Cox Enterprises has ample cash on hand after selling a majority stake in its TV and radio stations to Apollo Global Management in 2019, Fitch noted, and Cox Communications was expected to "continue to invest in strategic growth opportunities through its Cox Business segment." The deal enables Cox to exploit its fiber infrastructure and "address the overall growing demand for high capacity fiber in the commercial enterprise and carrier segment. It also allows CCI to continue its efforts to expand its addressable market footprint both organically and inorganically," Fitch said in a statement.

The HBO Max app is now supported by Cox Communications' Countour 2 and Contour Stream Player devices, the privately held cable operator said.

The Contour platform is a white-label version of Comcast’s Xfinity X1 video operating system, meaning voice control features are natively integrated into the HBO Max app. Cox noted that its customers can sign up for the $14.99-a-month WarnerMedia streaming service simply by saying “HBO Max” into their voice remote. The platform will support HBO Max’s movie playback in 4K Ultra HD, HDR 10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. 

Cox noted that the deployment on Contour comes in time for the March 18 release of the next big HBO Max tentpole movie, director Zach Snyder’s new cut of Justice League. Also, yet another WarnerMedia day-and-date feature, Godzilla vs. Kong, arrives March 31. 

Notably, Comcast deployed HBO Max onto X1, as well as the thin-client platform based on X1 tech, Xfinity Flex, back in December. 

Cox has just under 3.7 million remaining subscribers after losing around 215,000 in 2020, according to a recent Leitchtman Research Group estimate. It’s unclear as to how many of those customers use Contour tech. 

Warner Media touted around 17.2 million customers having upgraded to the app-based HBO Max as of the end of Q4—a metric improved no doubt by gaining distribution on X1, as well as Roku and Amazon Fire TV, toward the end of 2020. 

Two months after ending its four-year battle with Comcast to make the No. 1 U.S. cable operator pay it patent fees for tech tied to its X1 video platform, TiVo has announced an IP licensing deal with Cox Communications, which licenses X1 from Comcast.

“Our patent license renewal with Cox Communications further confirms the substantial relevance and value of TiVo’s intellectual property portfolios, particularly in the U.S. pay-TV market,” said Samir Armaly, president of intellectual property for TiVo parent company Xperi, in a press release. 

Also read: With Comcast Suit Settled, TiVo Sets Sights on Canada

Cox is the largest privately held telecommunications company in America, and it controlled just over 3.7 million pay TV subscriptions as of the end of September. 

Cox said way back in May 2018 that 1 million of those TV customers had converted to Contour TV, a platform based on Comcast’s blueprint for the X1 video system. That was the last customer benchmark on Contour released by Cox. 

Speaking to Next TV right after announcing the Comcast deal, Armaly said putting X1 licensees  next on TiVo’s list. Notably, there’s three more such cable operators in Canada: Rogers Communications and Videotron. (TiVo signed a renewal with Shaw Communications in 2019.)

“Canada is certainly an opportunity that we’re excited to have,” Armaly said.

TiVo was purchased last year by San Diego tech company Xperi, creating an IP licensing powerhouse of more than 10,000 patents and patent applications. 

The advertising sales arms of top cable operators Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications have produced a playbook designed to help distributors, programmers, media buyers and advertisers take advantage of their addressable advertising capabilities.

The playbook is the latest step in the cable operators’ On Addressability initiative started in 2019 as a way to increase the effectiveness and value of television advertising.

Hear More About The Playbook at the Advanced Advertising Summit Tuesday: Comcast’s Marcien Jenckes, Charter’s David Kline and Cox’s Louis Gump are keynote speakers. Register now.

Featured in the playbook, available to anyone in the industry via the website www.onaddressability.com, a step-by-step technical guide to help programmers and distributors launch addressable advertising, a buyer’s guide to addressable TV and a sellers guide to addressable TV advertising. There are also definitions of terms used in addressable advertising and an overview of standards that the group hopes the industry will adopt in order achieve scale and simplicity of use.

“Since the launch of On Addressability, we’ve been talking with major programmers and distributors to help marketers incorporate addressability into their TV strategies to drive better results. Despite this progress, however, there are still challenges for both buyers and sellers alike. That was the impetus for the playbook,” said Marcien Jenckes, president, Comcast Advertising. “The timing could not be better. In the current environment, advertisers are ready to pivot, and we need to be ready, too. The technology is there. Now we just need to bring advertisers a more scalable and consistent offering – and do it quickly.”

Related: Comcast Tries to Unite Cable Industry on Addressable Ads

Traditional television advertising growth was slow before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, closing business and forcing those that were open to rethink how they were spending their advertising dollars. 

The industry has touted addressable advertising--the ability to send different targeted messages to different audiences rather than broadcast the same commercial to all viewers--as a way to be more effective and better compete with digital media.

With different distributors using different technology and protocols in different parts of the country, advertisers and media buyers found it complicated to do addressable ad campaigns at scale, leading to calls for industry-wide standards and more cooperation and interoperability among cable operators and other distributors.

The Advanced Advertising Summit has more on Addressable Advertising: Top execs from Xandr, Nielsen, Canoe and Ampersand are panelists Tuesday. Register Now.

The On Addressability campaign is designed to tell marketers that the industry now has the capability to run campaigns at scale and that it has become easier to plan, buy and evaluate addressable TV campaigns.

“To maximize the value that television brings to marketers as a full-funnel solution, we must ensure that addressability rolls out in a secure, simple, and scalable way,” said David Kline, executive VP, Charter Communications and President, Spectrum Reach. “This will take the commitment of the entire television advertising ecosystem. As a frontline distributor of addressable solutions, Spectrum Reach is eager to work with our partners Comcast and Cox to share our thinking and learnings and help accelerate this process.”

Related: AMC Networks Signs Up With Addressable Ad Group

In June AMC Networks signed up with the On Addressability partners and said it would make a portion of its commercial inventory available for addressable advertising. In July, Discovery also signed up for On Addressability, saying it would be offering advertisers the ability to dynamically insert ads into programming in both video on demand and linear environments.

Related: Discovery Joins MSOs’ On Addressability Initiative

One constraint on addressable advertising is the only inventory available to cable operators is the two minutes of local advertising time in each hour of programming the get as part of their distribution agreements with networks.

Addressable advertising is particularly useful at a time when brands are carefully scrutinizing how to spend their marketing dollars and analyzing the results of their advertising investments, the operators said.

“The interest in data-driven, audience-based TV advertising strategies from both media buyers and TV sellers has never been stronger, and we face a set of common challenges to realize our full potential,” said Louis Gump, senior VP, Cox Media. “The fastest way to clear these hurdles is to work together as an industry to determine best practices, improve processes, and share strategies for success. On Addressability is helping the industry move toward these goals, and the playbook is one tangible example of these efforts.”

The playbook’s buyer’s guide offers strategies for incorporating addressability into media strategies to drive specific advertising objectives

The seller’s guide has learnings on executing addressable TV campaigns for marketers with scalable and easy-to-use solutions.

The three big cable operators joined up last year to launch the On Addressability Initiative, which aims to offer advertisers addressable advertising at scale by creating standards across their footprints.

With addressable advertising, marketers can send specific messages to individual homes, increasing the effectiveness of campaigns. Streaming networks, which run on internet protocol, are set up to provide addressable advertising. Getting cable TV technologies to cooperate has been trickier, which is what On Addressability is looking to solve.

AMC has been signing on to advanced advertising initiatives including working with OpenAP and Xandr.

“Addressable is the future of advertising and with On Addressability, we are finally bringing the future into the present,” said Kim Kelleher, president of commercial revenue and partnerships, AMC Networks. “At AMC Networks, we are focused on bringing performance-based marketing to our clients and innovative solutions to brands, however they are interested in buying television advertising. Fortunately, AMC Networks is in a unique position to push this frontier and, with our partners at Charter, Comcast and Cox, we are already getting started.” 

As part of what is described as a pilot program, AMC will allocate some of its commercial to addressable ads delivered to audiences across the Charter, Comcast and Cox cable TV footprints. That will give those operators more linear advertising inventory to sell to national advertisers.

So far, most of the addressable advertising operators have been able to sell has been in the spots that run in the local breaks that run in cable programming.

“We launched the On Addressability initiative last year because as MVPDs, we are responsible for delivering ads into viewers’ households. Enabling addressable TV has to begin with the content distributors who lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of Comcast Advertising. “Programmers have the largest amount of inventory, however, and we need their participation to achieve scale. AMC Networks’ decision to partner with On Addressability is important for the industry and the start of what we believe is a growing trend.”

In addition to establishing standard and technical solutions, On Addressability is tackling other issues including measurement. 

Canoe Ventures, owned by Comcast, Cox and Charter, is handling the technical implementation and service management of linear and VOD addressability. That gives programmers one main entity to work with instead of dealing with the three cable operators separately.

“Even though MVPDs have inventory across all platforms – IP, VOD, online included – linear television is still where the majority of viewing takes place, so if we can bring better targeting and more scale to TV advertising, while maintaining security and brand safety, everyone wins, “ said David Kline, executive VP of Charter Communications and president of Spectrum Reach. “We’re looking at a really big opportunity, and with the cooperation and support of forward-thinking programmers like AMC, we’re well on our way.”

Future Today said it signed a distribution deal with Cox Communication that puts its streaming channels on Cox Contour TV and the Contour Stream Player.

 Related: Comcast to Carry Streaming Channels From Future Today 

The networks--Fawsome, HappyKids and FilmRise--feature movies, TV shows and kids programming. 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In February, Future Today signed a deal with Comcast and had its best performance ever in April, with users up 125% versus a year earlier and streaming hours up 100%. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Future Today consumption is up nearly 30%.

“We are pleased to be offering Cox customers all of our channels through Contour TV and Contour Stream Player,” said Vikrant Mathur, COO and co-founder of Future Today. “In these trying times with families sheltering at home, the family and entertainment channels will be particularly compelling to viewers and are watched more than any other channels in their class across our platform.”

In addition to its channels, Future Today owns a cloud-based technology platform that manages OTT service for more than 350 content owners, producers, distributors and media companies.

Future Today content is available via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple, LG, Samsung, Vizio, Xbox, iOS and Android.

Subscription video on demand service True Royalty TV has launched on Cox Contour TV, executives from both parties said Monday.

The $5.99 per month service, which features original and acquired content surrounding the British Royal Family, will be featured as part of the Cox Contour TV programming lineup. In addition to content about the British Royal Family, True Royalty TV features documentaries and docu-dramas about other Monarchies around the world, said the network. 

“The launch on Cox is a tremendous step forward for True Royalty TV ... we have tapped into a specialized content sector that has a massive fan base – a fact that our platform partners have come to fully appreciate,” said Gregor Angus, True Royalty TV CEO and co-founder in a statement. “Our distribution on this platform will be vital in our continued growth in the US in the months and years to come.”

True Royalty TV is also available in the US on Xfinity’s X1 platform, Sling TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, via iOS and Android app stores and online at www.TrueRoyalty.tv.

The State of Massachusetts said AT&T TV Now, Netflix and pretty much any other OTT service are not competitors to cable.

The state's Department of Telecommunications and Cable filed comments Thursday as part of its opposition to a request from Cox Communications. The cable company wants the FCC declare its Holland, Mass. system to be subject to "effective competition" from streaming service AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now). Such a ruling would provide Cox with regulatory relief. 

Related: Markey Warns Against Dubbing OTT Effective Cable Competitor

The state agency told the FCC that classifying as "effective competition" a non-facilities-based video service like AT&T TV Now, which requires the broadband facilities of a third party like Cox to get its video to its customers, would undermine the commission’s policy goal of encouraging facilities-based investment and limiting regulation of the internet."

Following Massachusetts logic, Netflix would not be considered an effective competitor to traditional pay TV, even though it is clearly pulling eyeballs away from both day-and-date and VOD cable content.

Netflix certainly doesn't see it that way. In a recent 10-K filing it said its competition includes MVPDs, and points out that it has more than 167 million paid subscribers.

While the FCC prefers facilities-based competition, it does not exclude non-facilities-based competitors from the regulatory conversation in other areas. For example, it approved the T-Mobile-Sprint deal in part because Dish gets to run the companies' spun-off prepaid wireless business, which still requires Dish to use the Sprint-T-Mobile facilities, as part of the effort to create a competitor to the merged wireless providers.

Back in October, the FCC granted an effective competition petition by Charter and, in the process, opened the door to Cox and others by ruling that AT&T TV Now, and by extension any similar OTT, was effective competition to traditional cable video, a finding that triggers basic rate deregulation.

Historically, cable providers have cited the ubiquity of satellite as justification for removing rate regulations. But in this test case of sorts, Charter and the smaller, independent operators represented by ACA Connects were basing that OTT competition call on the availability of AT&T TV Now and seeking rate dereg in various Massachusetts and Hawaii markets, essentially the last remaining rate-regulated markets because regulators in those two states had effectively rebutted arguments by Charter that the markets were effectively competitive. (The FCC under Democratic chairman Tom Wheeler voted to presume that cable face competition in all markets [thanks primarily to DBS] unless local regulators could rebut that. The former presumption had been they were not competitive unless cable ops could prove they were).

The FCC’s Charter order said AT&T's OTT service fits all of the definitions of an LEC-provided competitive video provider for purposes of the effective competition trigger — comparable services, offered direct to home, and marketed by AT&T. The item said a provider does not have to have its own facilities to be a comparable video service, one of the sticky wickets in the long-standing debate on how streaming video should be treated in Washington.

Cox followed Charter's lead and Massachusetts is now trying to close the door.

In addition to saying the lack of facilities makes AT&T TV Now a nonstarter as effective cable competition, the state said that, even if it were a competitor. there could be no guarantee that AT&T TV Now would continue to be viable given that it has lost half its subs since the Charter petition was filed and had its biggest sub loss to date in the fourth quarter of 2019. Then there was its drop of support for Roku devices, including Smart TVs.

"Overall, there has been significant upheaval in the streaming video industry over recent months and years," it told the commission. "As of January 2020, electronics giant Sony discontinued its Playstation Vue streaming live video service,148 after being named Wired Magazine’s Best Overall TV Streaming Service as recently as October 2019.149 Although many households subscribe to multiple streaming video services, analysts and video executives agree that there is likely to be substantial shrinkage in the number of streaming services in the near future."

Cable ops have been angling for the OTT effective competition tag, and for good reason.

To avoid a return to basic cable regulations, cable operators are looking to establish the precedent that OTT video maintains the effective competition status of almost all systems today, and do so now, as cord-cutting continues to cut into subscriber counts for traditional competitors and as over-the-top becomes the video delivery system of choice for former satellite customers.

Cable companies fear that if the subscriber counts for DirecTV or Dish Network go south, local franchise authorities could cite that as a reason they were no longer subject to effective competition and reinstate basic rate regulations.

A jury in Virginia federal court slapped Cox Communications hard Thursday, issuing a $1 billion verdict in a copyright infringement case that said the cable operator willfully allowed its customers to illegally download music.

The suit was filed July 31, 2018 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by 53 music publishers, including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and others. They claimed that Cox, even after it had been notified by the publishers that its customers were illegally downloading their copyrighted songs, the cable operator ignored them.

All in all the music publishers counted 10,017 instances of infringement by Cox customers, and the jury found all of them had merit, assigning a value of $99,830.29 to each work, for a total of $1 billion.

“The jury’s verdict sends a clear message – Cox and other ISPs that fail to meet their legal obligations to address piracy on their networks will be held accountable,” Record Industry Association of America chief legal officer Kenneth Doroshow said in a statement. “The jury recognized these companies’ legal obligation to take meaningful steps to protect music online and made a strong statement about the value of a healthy music ecosystem for everyone – ranging from creators to fans to the available outlets for legitimate music consumption.”

According to the suit, Cox “deliberately refused to take reasonable measures to curb its customers from using its Internet services to infringe on others’ copyrights—even once Cox became aware of particular customers engaging in specific, repeated acts of infringement.”

The suit continued that the music publishers sent “thousands” of infringement notices to Cox about the abuse, claiming that instead of working with the publishers to stop the infringement, the “imposed an arbitrary cap on the number of infringement notices it would accept from copyright holders, thereby willfully blinding itself to any of its subscribers’ infringements that exceeded its “cap.” Cox, the plaintiff said, also refused to cancel service of customers that were illegally downloading copyrighted material, instead implementing “‘soft terminations’ with virtually automatic reinstatement, or it simply did nothing at all.”

Cox said it was disappointed in the verdict and that it plans to appeal.

“The judgement is unwarranted, unjust and an egregious amount,” Cox said in a statement. “Today, you can download a song for a dollar. This judgement is for nearly $100,000 per song. We plan to appeal the case and vigorously defend ourselves. We provide customers with a powerful tool that connects to a world full of content and information. Unfortunately, some customers have chosen to use that connection for wrongful activity. We don’t condone it, we educate on it and we do our best to help curb it, but we shouldn’t be held responsible for the bad actions of others.”

For several years, Comcast billed its X1 platform as a mitigator of an inevitable cord-cutting trend, a salve that didn’t necessarily eliminate churn, but limited its impact.

But faced with resurgent linear video attrition in the third quarter—Comcast lost 238,000 Xfinity TV users during Q3 vs. 106,000 in the year-ago quarter—Comcast seems done beating the drum of X1 as a churn buster.

The focus now seems to be on Xfinity Flex, the X1-derived IP client device offered free to broadband-only users that lets them stream Netflix, Amazon Prime, and soon, Hulu. With Comcast adding 379,000 broadband users in Q3, X1’s best features—including voice control—are now seemingly being leveraged to advance the broadband-first agenda that has taken hold of the cable business over the last several years.

Nobody’s talking about saving, at least a portion, of the linear video business anymore.

“What we are delivering to our customers is just a great streaming experience with Flex, and it's completely integrated. The content is available through the voice remote, just like X1,” Dave Watson told investment analysts during Comcast’s Q3 earnings call last month.

Certainly, the Flex model is proliferating.

Privately held Cox Communications now licenses Flex technology, along with patents from the broader X1 ecosystem, and is marketing a product it calls Contour Stream to its broadband customers.

Charter Communications, which lost 75,000 linear video subscribers in Q3, an uptick over the 54,000 lost in the third quarter of 2018, might license Flex, too.

“We have discussed that with Comcast and it's an interesting idea, and so I would say that, we are considering it and it has advantages,” Charter Chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said during last month’s Q3 call. “We have a significant number of app based relationships that we've developed on multiple devices, and that strategy is working for us. And but putting inexpensive devices out with your service makes some sense to us.”

Related: WOW’s ‘Edge-Outs’ Can’t Overcome Video Attrition in Q3

Meanwhile, WideOpenWest CEO Teresa Elder didn’t specifically reference Flex during WOW’s third-quarter earnings call earlier this month. But she did talk about a paradigm in which access to IP-delivered video drives usage rates of higher-speed broadband.

“We were the first operator to have 1 gig services in over 95% of our footprint. And we had, very early days, established a different relationship with Netflix to put the content closer to the customers so that we routinely are in the top rankings of Netflix ISP viewership,” Elder said.

Englewood, Colorado-based midsized operator WOW grew broadband revenue by 9.4% to $11.2 million in Q3, as its strategy of “edging out” its footprint drove an increase of 7,900 high-speed internet users for the quarter.

WOW’s video business, however, lost another 6,300 customers, dropping linear TV revenue by 10.8% to $12.9 million. Overall, WOW revenue dropped 2.1% to $285.4 million, largely on the sustained collapse of linear video.

Elder, however, wasn’t talking about ways to stop churn for traditional TV.

“We feel very good about our ability to provide streaming services and we believe customers come to us specifically for that,” she added.

Cox Communications, which licenses CPE technology from Comcast, has quietly debuted its own streaming player based on the No. 1 operator’s Xfinity Flex blueprint.

According to a Cox rep, Contour Stream has been available to broadband-only customers for $5 a month since May. Light Reading was the first to report on this Cox product. Privately owned Cox has set up a page for the product here.

Just as Contour follows the licensed blueprint for Comcast’s X1 video platform, Countour Stream is based on Xfinity Flex, which deploys a Comcast Xi6 client and XB6 DOCSIS 3.1 gateway.

Related: Comcast Makes Xfinity Flex Streaming Box and Voice Remote Free to Internet Only Customers

Contour Stream supports Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Tubi and ESPN3 apps, among others. It also uses Contour voice control navigation, just as Flex uses the X1 Voice Remote.

Notably, on Wednesday, Comcast announced that it would stop charging its broadband-only customers $5 a month and start giving Flex to them for free.

Also notable, Canadian operators Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Videotron also license X1. Expect a Flex offering from these operators soon. 

Viacom has further expanded the reach of its recently acquired ad-supported streaming platform, Pluto TV, announcing native integration into Cox Communications’ Contour platform.

Integration of the streaming platform means that it now shows up in the Contour user interface and is addressable via voice remote. 

For Viacom, which paid $340 million for the AVOD platform in January, it’s the second major distribution announcement for Pluto TV in the last week—earlier, it said that the streaming service is now available to Amazon Fire TV users in the UK, Germany and Austria.

As for doing business with Cox, the cable company has just under 4 million video subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group estimates. But it’s unclear as to exactly how many of those use Contour, which is Cox’s licensed and rebranded version of Comcast’s X1 platform. A little more than a year ago, Cox said it had gathered 1 million Contour users.

Pluto TV said it was reaching 12 million monthly users at the time it was purchased by Viacom. It now says that number is up to 16 million.

Typically, Cox announces integration of OTT platforms—Tubi was another recent addition—after Comcast introduces them to X1. And an X1 integration is said to be on the way, but Comcast hasn’t announced it yet.

Related: Cox Integrates YouTube Kids, NPR One Into Contour TV

“This is one more important step in our mission to entertain the planet,” said Tom Ryan, CEO and co-founder of Pluto TV, in a statement. “The launch of Pluto TV on Contour and Contour Stream Player will provide Cox customers with endless enjoyment of our curated, lean-back streaming offering."

Comcast said it has completed its 18-month mission to deploy DOCSIS 3.1-enabled 1-gig services.

The operator said that its DOCSIS 3.1-enabled 1-gig services are now available to 58 million homes and businesses, completing a rollout that started around 18 months ago.

Comcast would not reveal how many of its more than 26.5 million broadband customers are paying for 1 Gbps services. However, the company said that 75% of its subscribers have downstream speeds in excess of 100 Mbps.

Related: Comcast Broadens DOCSIS 3.1 Rollout

Comcast’s announcement coincides with similar benchmark from other cable operators. Charter recently said that it was 95% done with DOCSIS 3.1, while Cox Communications claims to be about 90% finished.

Speaking to MCN, Eric Schaefer, senior VP and general manager of broadband, automation and communications for Comcast, directed the attention to xFi, the operator’s Wi-Fi management solutions. He said 15.9 million Comcast homes currently use the product.

“A lot of folks are going to talk about speed, but what’s important for the vast majority fo people is converge and control in the home,” Schaefer said.

Cox Communications is the only major U.S. cable operator to enter into the FCC’s first auction of spectrum devoted to next-generation 5G services.

The privately held, Atlanta-based cable operator, the third-biggest U.S. MSO, is bidding for licenses in the 28 Gigahertz auction, set for Nov. 14, along with Dish Network, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Windstream and other telecom companies.

Dish, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Windstream and Frontier Communications are among the companies bidding for 28 GHz licenses in the FCC’s so-called “millimeter-wave” auction.

Notably absent are Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice USA, which have all expressed interest in participating in telecom’s ongoing wireless convergence in some form or another.

(Lists of the auction filers can be found here.)

Related: FCC Votes to Put More Broadband Spectrum in Play

The FCC is conducting its first-ever auction of high-frequency airwaves suitable for next-generation 5G wireless services. The airwaves being auctioned exist mostly in rural areas, with the largest available market being Honolulu, according to Morgan Stanley. The auction covers about a quarter of the U.S. airwaves. 

Comcast and Charter are mostly situated in metropolitan and suburban markets, although Altice has footprint in rural regions through its Suddenlink Communications purchase.

In a May FCC filing, Charter asked the FCC to wait to open the application window for the 24-GHz band auction until the 28 GHz auction was completed.  Charter reasoned that those companies that satisfied their spectrum needs in the 28 GHz auction (aka Auction 101) might want to demure on the 24 GHz auction (Auction 102).

But the No. 2 U.S. operator seemed to indicate that it would participate in the bidding.

“Charter is particularly excited about the opportunities presented with this high-band spectrum and is exploring how to use it to deliver ultra-fast, high-capacity services to consumers in communities across the country — large and small, as well as urban, suburban and rural,” the operator said in its filing.

However, Charter and Comcast have seemed more focused on the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band (CBRS), as well as the 3.7-4.2 GHz band, also known as the lower C-band.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress Americas event in Los Angeles last month, Charter senior vice president of wireless technology Craig Cowden said, “I do think millimeter wave has some propagation issues that will limit its effectiveness in terms of a true mobility layer.”

Music rights company BMG said it has won a “substantial” cash settlement from Cox Communications, stemming from a three-year-old copyright infringement suit against the cable operator, but declined to reveal the exact amount of the award.

BMG first sued Cox in 2015, claiming “contributory copyright infringement,” after it claimed Cox internet customers pirated BMG songwriters’ content online. BMG said although the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides protections to companies that unknowingly enable their customers to infringe on other parties’ copyrights, “they must have systems in place for copyright owners to seek the removal of infringing content or tackle infringing activity.”

BMG claimed that Cox was not entitled to take the so-called “safe harbor” defense because despite knowing that several customers repeatedly violated BMG copyrights, they did not terminate their service.

A federal court judge agreed with BMG in his ruling November 2015 and the following month the rights company was awarded $25 million in damages and $8.5 million in costs. But that verdict was overturned on appeal, with the appellate court ruling that although Cox wasn’t entitled to safe-harbor protection, the judge in the lower court case misdirected the jury.

BMG said in a statement: "BMG succeeded in establishing in court its central claim that an ISP needs to take specific action against subscribers it knows to be repeat copyright infringers. BMG is optimistic that this victory will persuade other U.S. ISPs to tighten up their procedures on copyright infringement. Having achieved a landmark ruling, BMG concluded that it made sense to accept a substantial settlement.” 

Cox declined to comment, in keeping with the confidential nature of the agreement, but confirmed it had reached a settlement with BMG.

Add Leverege, a startup with operations in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, to a growing list of tech partners that are helping to underpin Cox Communications’s new enterprise-focused Internet of Things (IoT) services unit.

Leverege said its software platform is a component of the recently launched Cox2M Connected Asset Services, a unit that is focused on multiple verticals, including transportation, fleet management, smart cities, real estate, retail, as well as energy and agriculture.

RELATED: Cox Banks on IoT

Leverege's platform aims to reduce the complexity of IoT deployments via third-party integrations, 24/7 notification and monitoring tools, and data analytics.

Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim used vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. The solution, piloted last year, connects more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network.

RELATED: Comcast’s MachineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

Founded in 2014, Leverege’s other announced partners include Google, Raytheon, Allen Hamilton, and Siren Marine, a company that operates a connected boat platform.

Cox has also announced that CoreKinect, another startup, will provide sensor-based products for Cox2M.

RELATED: Cox Forges IoT Deal with CoreKinect

“After an extensive survey of the market, we chose Leverege as our IoT platform partner and system integrator for numerous reasons including modularity and customization of the technology, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, rapid prototyping tools that greatly accelerate the development of end-to-end IoT solutions, and the world-class team that stands behind the products,” Josh Sommer, executive director of new growth strategy for Cox, said in a statement. 

After decades of trying to boost its status among its competitors in the pay TV service industry, cable companies believe they have finally found the answer to better customer care: take the cable out of cable TV. It’s not as easy as it sounds. 

But after years of laying the groundwork by building fiber networks that anticipated service outages before they happened, promoting technology and equipment that made accessing TV content and the internet easier and faster and shortening appointment windows to one or two hours instead of a full day, cable is moving toward a time when customers will be able to buy, provision, troubleshoot and repair service almost entirely by themselves.

Related: Cable’s Retail Efforts Take Center Stage

That is the path the banking industry — once at the bottom of customer satisfaction rankings and now near the top — has taken over the years, starting with ATMs and evolving into allowing customers to pay bills, transfer money and apply for new credit online.

To an extent, it’s already happening in the cable business. Customers can now provision some services online, and with technology like Comcast’s X1 operating system, Charter’s upcoming Worldbox and Altice USA’s Altice One hub, the era of plug-and-play cable service and provisioning is coming quickly. For some, it couldn’t come soon enough.

A Do-It-Yourself Era

“Ultimately, the idea is for us to go full self-install,” Altice USA chairman and CEO Dexter Goei said at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications conference earlier this month. “You should be able to connect your headless gateway at your drop, push a button … [plug] in your mini-box into your TV and into the wall for power, and should be able to self-provision everything.

“Every incidence going forward should be able to be dealt with remotely,” he said. “Unless there is a fault in the box itself, where we have to replace the box, nothing should require a customer technician coming into your home anymore.”

Altice USA is in the middle of a company-wide fiber buildout, dubbed Generation Gigaspeed, that will bring fiber to the home to all of the company’s 4.6 million customers in the next five years.

Cable has made some monumental strides in the past several years. Appointment windows are now from one to two hours in length, shaved down from windows of eight to 12 hours. Customers can now use their cellphones to track technicians and upgrade internet service speeds or add additional channels via the cable box. Yet cable continues to rate near the bottom of customer care lists compiled by independent researchers.

According to The Temkin Group, an independent customer care consultant in Waban, Mass., cable has consistently placed near the bottom of the company’s independent surveys. In its latest — the March 2018 Temkin Experience Report — cable again brought up the rear, running neck and neck with used car dealers, no-frills airlines and health-care insurers in almost every major category.

Best Efforts:In the March 2018 Temkin Experience Report, cable placed at the bottom of the list when customers were asked how easy it was to interact with the company. (Source: The Temkin Group)

Cable operators have taken customer care seriously for decades. To share ideas and concepts, the industry has formed the Cable Center Customer Care Committee (C5), a consortium of executives from the largest operators in North America and Europe that is focused on expanding industry knowledge and facilitating new approaches to customer care. Dr. Charles Patti, a University of Denver and Queensland University of Technology professor emeritus and the James M. Cox professor of customer experience management and senior fellow at The Cable Center, leads the C5 efforts.

In the past, Patti told Multichannel News, cable’s customer care efforts were centered on Net Promoter Scores (NPS), which are determined when customers get asked how much they would recommend a service on a scale of one to 10. While NPS still plays an important role, other metrics and terms are beginning to creep their way into cable’s customer care vocabulary. In the future, terms such as “Trust,” “Effort,” “Likability” and “Forgiveness” will become mainstays in the cable dictionary.

All About the Journey

Patti said the focus now in the cable industry is on the “customer journey,” or how a subscriber to cable services gets to where they currently are in the relationship. Making sure their travels are enjoyable should be a top priority for every cable company.

Patti said other industries have used more emotional terms to measure their customer care success, including banks, retailers, supermarkets and fast food companies.

“You’re trying to find the relationships between the measures that you use,” he said. “The downside of Net Promoter Score — it’s essentially one question: How likely is it that you would recommend Comcast, Cox, whatever, on a scale of 1-10? But it doesn’t tell you why, just how likely are you to recommend. There may be 50 different things going through your mind, as a responder, as to why you’re saying that.”

Those can be addressed in additional questions. NPS has a transaction score, which could ask for customers to base their recommendation on an installer visit. If that score is low, then the company knows it may have to offer additional training to that installer.

That inquiry, too, can lead a customer down a rabbit hole. Maybe the installer was late for the appointment, but he or she fixed the problem quickly.

Sweet Smell of Success:Asked to what degree customers were able to accomplish what they set out to do with a company, cable firms again did poorly. (Source: The Temkin Group)

“That’s why companies will look at multiple measures, because if you improve effort, then you’re natural inclination should be, what is the relationship between that and my Net Promoter Score?” Patti said. “Is it increasing? If it’s not, then I have something else I have to explore.”

At Medallia, a customer-care software vendor that counts Comcast among its clients, senior customer care principal Brian Andrews said 60% to 70% of his company’s customers still use NPS as the primary metric, and for many it is a fine way to determine how a company stacks up against the competition.

“You have a group of customers that love them, a group of customers that hate them, and a group of customers that are in between,” Andrews said. “It’s a fairly easy concept to understand. You want to reduce the number that hate you.”

Companies find out quickly that customer care isn’t quite that cut and dried.

“If you are a customer and you’re dealing with cable company A, and you have an issue and call in, your likelihood to recommend is probably not going to be based on that one agent and that one call,” Andrews said. “It tends to be over time.”

Better NPS scores can come from reducing the effort a customer must exert to get their issue resolved, not having them answer the same questions repeatedly and making the overall experience as enjoyable as possible.

“You generally want less friction,” Andrews said.

Emotional Rescue:Asked to think about how they felt with their interactions with the company over the last 60 days, cable companies trailed the pack. (Source: The Temkin Group)

Patti said cable can learn from other industries and from competitors. Companies like Uber, Amazon Prime and Netflix made their mark initially through ease of use and lower prices. Cable companies are starting to take the hint. Comcast even bundles Netflix with its broadband service, something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago.

“It’s really what is the customer’s experience from end-to-end, how do we modify processes to simplify the customer experience, minimize any challenge points for the customers and create an experience that makes it easy for them,” Cox Communications, senior vice president of customer care Peter Lilly said. “The journey work is a big part of what we’re doing and it’s informing all of the other initiatives that we’re spinning up after the fact.”

One of those initiatives is alternate channel support, where Cox is using social media to help customer better interact with the company. While Twitter and Facebook are what most people think of when they think of social media, Lilly said Cox is giving customers the option to online chat or text with an agent rather than calling on the phone and waiting on hold.

Case management, or how the company gets to know each customer’s habits, is also important, he said. If a customer starts out on an online web or chat channel and then calls a support center on the phone, Cox will be able to transfer the information so it doesn’t have to repeatedly ask that customer the same questions.

Tracking Customer Questions

“In today’s world, it’s not uncommon that we would have to ask the same question a couple of times,” Lilly said. “In the future we hope we can eliminate or minimize the need for that. As you expand case management out further it points to the future, which is allowing customers to self-help.”

For Cox, the decision to license Comcast’s X1 operating system — to power Cox’s Contour platform — was also a big step toward improving the overall experience, with voice activated remotes and a better user interface that integrates services like Netflix and YouTube. Net Promoter Scores have risen 200% since Cox introduced Contour, MSO spokesman Todd Smith said.

“I think that has certainly changed the experience for the customer,” Lilly said. “It certainly has changed the way we support customers, because we’re getting questions and issues that we never had before, but in many ways they are easier to resolve than in the old days, and it’s more of an educational solution than a technical problem.”

Gateway devices like the Panoramic WiFi, which enables wireless home connectivity and will allow the company to launch wireless boxes and expand the level of services it provides on the road to self-help.

“Whether it’s web or mobile web, applications need to be really tight,” Lilly said. “As you expand your services, customers don’t want to call you for everything. They want to be able to resolve their issues themselves and be able to learn and use the products, because they’re simple and easy.”

Once relegated to the sidelines, retail locations are increasingly becoming the new face of cable companies, allowing customers not only to pay their bills and pick up equipment, but to try out new services in a relaxed, high-tech atmosphere.

Comcast arguably unveiled the new face of cable in 2015, when it announced plans to revamp its Xfinity stores across the country, turning its retail locations into cable versions of Apple’s Genius Bars. With sleek lines and stacks of high-tech equipment, big-screen TVs and video game consoles, the stores not only showcased what Comcast had to offer, but educated customers in the nuances of broadband, home security and control and all they could do with those services.

Related: Helping Subscribers Help Themselves

Back in 2015, at the launch of its flagship Studio Xfinity in Chicago during INTX: The Internet & Television Expo, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said the operator saw the new retail initiative as a huge opportunity.

“As we improve the service and offer more and more products, customers are saying ‘Gosh, I didn’t know I could do that,’” Roberts told Multichannel News at the time.

Comcast has since built or refurbished 258 Xfinity retail stores across the country, with new plans to upgrade the experience even more. Clearly Comcast, and others, are seeing the power of putting on a good face.

Charter Communications is revamping hundreds of Spectrum stores across its footprint, partly in anticipation of the planned June launch of its wireless product. Cox Communications has more than 100 Cox Solutions stores across its footprint and Altice USA opened Optimum Experience Centers in Long Island, N.Y., and Paramus, N.J., where customers can interact with new products like the Altice One hub, “smart home” offerings from Nest and see high-speed internet demonstrations. The Experience Centers are separate from the company’s Optimum retail walk-in stores that continue to handle all exchanges, returns and requests for equipment and in-person bill payments.

Comcast vice president of retail John Giacomazzi said Comcast has conducted reams of research, and has spoken with employees and individual customers to make the normally transactional nature of customer interactions more palatable. In the retail business, he added, if a customer walks in with a piece of equipment to return or repair, they are met at the door by a greeter, who takes the equipment, gives them a receipt and encourages them to browse around the store while their transaction is completed.

The retail location is set up in zones — X1 for entertainment, home security and the connected home, internet and Xfinity Mobile. Within each of those zones, the product is on display so they can use it themselves or be walked through its operation by a sales consultant.

“It’s a much brighter retail store experience and [has] more of a residential feel, as opposed to an industrial service center,” Giacomazzi said. “It’s a warm environment. We have solid oak floors; we have bright lights and a very neutral palette. Everything is out and open and available for receiving a customer’s touch and engagement.”

The stores are also in high-traffic retail areas, such as malls and shopping centers, away from the more industrial office park locations of the past.

“We’re with traditional retailers — Apple and Sephora, Starbucks, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma,” Giacomazzi said, adding that most of the stores are standalone, but the company has a few mall locations coming up. Comcast expects to add more than 50 new stores throughout the footprint this year alone. The goal, he said, is to eventually have every customer within a 15 minute drive of an Xfinity retail location.

The stores also are chock full of accessories like new xFi pods — plug-in devices that extend the reach of WiFi service throughout the home — as well as cell phone cases, protection, power, speakers and headsets.

“We’re expanding the complementary accessories,” Giacomazzi said, adding that Comcast is moving toward accessories that will enhance the overall experience. “If you are streaming or DVR-ing your content away from home, we have a nice headset that will help you listen to that content.”

Cox Communications senior vice president of customer care Peter Lilly agreed, adding that at Cox Solutions stores, Cox sells everything from lightbulbs to modems.

“It’s not meant to break the bank as much as make sure that customers are getting the most of what they want from us as a full service business,” Lilly said. “It’s as much about retaining a customer, making sure we’re adding value and sharing knowledge about what our products can do for them. We want somebody when they walk in to pay their bill to know not only that their bill was paid, but to learn something new about their products and services. Maybe it’s something they are already paying for, but they didn’t understand how to get the most out of it. That’s another benefit for us and a value-add for the customer long-term.”

Cox Communications has tapped CoreKinect to provide sensor-based products for Cox2M, a new Internet-of-Things unit that provides connected asset services tailored for business customers and emerging opportunities with smart cities.

RELATED: Cox Banks on IoT

Financial terms weren’t announced, but CoreKinect will design and develop hardware that Cox2M will use for an asset-tracking service that will also target the smart home, connected wearables, and the agriculture and energy sectors.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based startup said it manages the production of IoT products, from the initial design to the assembly line. Its IoT solutions include GPS tracking, asset tracking, and vehicle/fleet tracking, fire response systems, waste disposal sensors, utility metering, and smart city applications.

CoreKinect claims that it can turn ideas into “workable prototypes” within six to eight weeks, on average.

Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. The solution, piloted last year, connects more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network.

“Cox is redefining the IoT space by introducing custom, purpose-built sensors at market disrupting price points,” Assar Badri, CoreKinect’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement.

“The depth and breadth of CoreKinect’s team, quality product development, and complete supply chain solutions will help ensure a successful deployment for our Cox2M business line,” added Josh Sommer, executive director of new growth strategy for Cox. “CoreKinect’s low-power, wide-area network and asset tracking systems provide an agnostic communications platform that will allow Cox Communications to deliver end-to-end IoT solutions.”

Following up an effort from last fall, Comcast will again enable X1 customers to vote for finalists for NBC’s The Voice using their remote controls.

Starting with tonight’s episode of The Voice, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC (the show will air on Mondays and Tuesdays at that time), customers can cast votes with their X1 remotes, including remotes with integrated voice capabilities.

In a new twist, Cox Communications customers on the MSO’s new “Contour” set-top box platform, enabled through a syndication deal with Comcast’s X1 platform, will also have access to the TV-based voting feature.

RELATED: Cox: 1M Subs Now on X1-Powered ‘Contour’ TV Product

“X1 customers will also be able to cast up to ten votes per artist during the broadcast, on par with the show’s other voting methods,” Comcast’s Zane Vella, who joined the company via its acquisition of deep metadata company Watchwith, explained in this blog post.

RELATED: Going Deep With Metadata (subscription required)

“After a customer casts a vote (and/or votes) on X1, each interaction gets passed over to NBC’s official voting partner Telescope to ensure they’re tallied alongside votes from other platforms,” he added. 

Cox Communications confirmed that it has activated the integration of YouTube on internet-connected boxes for the MSO's new “Contour” platform.

A Cox official noted that more details about the YouTube integration will be announced later this week, but said YouTube content will be searchable via the Contour guide and will work with the service’s voice remote system.

The integration, first reported by CableFAX, comes about five months after Cox completed the integration of another OTT-delivered service, Netflix. Netflix content has also been woven into the Contour guide and YouTube content is searchable using the Contour service’s voice remote.

RELATED: Cox Integrates Netflix on New ‘Contour’ Boxes

Because it is delivered via the internet, YouTube content streamed to Cox Contour boxes (as it is with Netflix) will count against the customer’s internet usage plan, per this FAQ about the integration.

Cox recently introduced an unlimited data option that complements a policy in which it charges customers $10 for an extra 50 gigabytes when they exceed their monthly data plan.

RELATED: Cox Nears Launch of Unlimited Data Plan

Update: Cox, which has also integrated the iHeartRadio app to Contour boxes, noted that customers can also access their YouTube channel subscriptions, playlists and saved videos through Contour, and that multiple YouTube accounts can be synched. More than 60% of Cox customers say they watch YouTube videos weekly, per a statement from Cox president Pat Esser. 

Cox’s new Contour platform is powered by Comcast’s cloud-based X1 platform. Comcast has also notched X1 syndication agreements with three Canada-based service providers – Shaw Communications, Videotron and Rogers Communications.

RELATED: Videotron to Use Comcast’s X1 Platform to Power New IPTV Service

Cox Communications said this week it embarked on the national rollout of a home automation as-a-service offering for its Homelife product that complements a larger offering that also includes home security services.  

The wider rollout, which will reach all Cox markets in the coming months, follows trials of home automation-only services in Tulsa, San Diego and Rhode Island.  

“We see two markets forming, a well-established and growing home security market and an emerging market who aspires to smart home living but who may not want 24/7 monitored security,” Kristine Faulkner, SVP, Cox Homelife, said in a statement. “Offering more choices in the Cox Homelife portfolio enables us to expand our reach beyond the homes that are buying home security today and establishes an umbrella for future expansion into every home.”  

Cox Homelife Automation, which will start at $19.99 per month according to FierceCable, is designed to control a range of smart home devices, including indoor/outdoor Homelife HD cameras, custom alerts and notifications, connected lights, and door locks and thermostats. Cox is backing that up with pro installs and 24/7 phone support.  

Comcast, which last year acquired a part of Icontrol that Cox has been using for its smart home services, has also been pushing hard on smart home automation that will cover its range of residential services. Cox’s new Contour-branded pay TV platform is also underpinned by an X1 syndication deal with Comcast.  

RELATED: Comcast Scales Home Automation Services to 15M Subs  

Following earlier trial work, Cox Communications has launched Cox2M, an Internet-of-Things unit that offers connected asset services that are targeted to business customers and emerging opportunities with smart cities.

Cox said the unit’s new offering provides turnkey services that monitors and tracks commercial assets and inventory, including vehicles and power lines. Service examples include automotive lot management, smart cities (lighting transit, etc.), connected healthcare, and fault detection. Cox believes that Cox2M’s service line can be used to serve several types of industries spanning transportation, cities and campuses, energy companies and utilities, agriculture, retail and real estate.

Corporate cousin Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. Cox said that solution was piloted last year and is to be implemented across the U.S. and Canada to connect more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network. Other Cox Automotive brands are also considering the platform for additional applications, Cox said.

“Cox connects millions of people and businesses today, and we’re constantly thinking about how to deliver powerful new outcomes through that experience,” Sujata Gosalia, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Cox, said in a statement. “With Cox2M, we will play an even more significant role in supporting the smart businesses and smart cities of the future.”

Cox said Cox2M was incubated in its New Growth organization over the past two years. It’s led by Cox executive director Barak Weinisman.

Cox is also the latest cable operator to launch a unit focused on IoT opportunities. Comcast, for example, has launched machineQ, a unit that entered the early stages of its commercial rollout last year.

Comcast IoT Unit Heads Into a Dozen More Markets

Cox Communications has struck a national sponsorship agreement with the Drone Racing League (DRL), and will use that deal in part to tout the speeds and performance of its WiFi products. 

That sponsorship will be active during the 2018 DRL Allianz World Championship Season and extend to drone pilot Nick “WildWilly” Willard, a two-time, third place DRL winner who hails from Atlanta, Cox’s headquarters city.  

RELATED: Cox Crosses Whole-Home WiFi Milestone

Willard will be among 18 top pilots who will race custom-built DRL drones during the seven-event series, which will be broadcast in more than 75 countries on networks such as ESPN, Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1, OSN, Fox Sports Asia and Disney XD.

Financial terms weren’t announced, but Cox said its sponsorship will include a custom commercial spot produced by DRL’s media team, digital content creation, and live FPV (First Person View) freestyle events, where Willard will perform drone tricks and maneuvers while donning a branded uniform.

“The Drone Racing League is an undeniable reminder of the speed and performance excellence required by today’s connected devices. We’re proud to sponsor DRL and support millions of other high-speed applications with our nationwide network,” Mark Greatrex, executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at Cox, said in a statement.

In addition to participating on a Cable WiFi consortium that has deployed more than 500,000 hotspots in outdoor and business locations, Cox also markets Panoramic WiFi, a premium, whole-home WiFi offering that has more than 1 million customers on board.

Cox Media, Cox Communications’ ad sales division, has locked in an exclusive, multi-year deal to represent AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain’s local on-air advertising opportunities during Vegas Golden Knights games, including pre-game and postgame programming.

Starting with the new NHL expansion team’s second season this fall, Cox Media will also serve as the exclusive sales rep for the AT&T-owned regional network for national on-air advertising during Vegas Golden Knight game broadcasts.

Financial terms were not announced, but the agreement covers pre-game, post-game and in-game on-air advertising opportunities, as well as other opportunities allotted to the network’s distributors, Cox Media said.

“This opportunity to sell the Network’s advertising time in Vegas Golden Knights games is a great addition to Cox Media’s portfolio of offerings for our clients and we are thrilled to be working with AT&T SportsNet and representing advertising opportunities in games of the city’s first major sport franchise,” Brett Burke, VP of sales for Cox Media’s Las Vegas market, said in a statement.

Cox Business, the commercial services unit of Cox Communications, said it will offer its security product across all regions as it prepares to make it available soon in additional markets that include Cleveland, Roanoke, Santa Barbara, Palos Verdes and Sun Valley.

That offering, calledCox Business Security Solutions (CBSS), is underpinned by a 24/7 professionally-monitored UL Listed, 5-Diamond facility, Cox Business said.

CBSS uses a broadband connection with a wireless backup to help customers continually monitor the system and verify ongoing security. It also ties in a mobile alert system with cameras, enables customers to access and control the system with any connected smartphone, tablet or PC/laptop.

“We’re thrilled to expand Cox Business Security Solutions nationwide,” Steve Rowley, executive vice president, Cox Business, said in a statement. “Simply put, business owners must monitor their environments and create a ‘smart business’. With Cox Business Security Solutions, our video surveillance and detection systems help drive confidence in asset protection and provide peace of mind.”

Cox Business provides said it provides voice, data, video and security services for more than 350,000 small and regional businesses.

Video-on-demand programming continues to grow as an advertising medium, according to new figures from Canoe.

Ads served by Canoe in video-on-demand programming registered 6.995 billion impressions in the fourth quarter, up 37% from 5.111 billion a year ago.

Canoe ran 3,412 campaigns in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 46% from 2,341 a year ago. Campaigns for clients represented 82% of the campaigns while network tune in ads comprised 18% of the campaigns. A year ago, 79% of the campaigns were run for clients.

Related: Set-Top VOD Ads Must Evolve to Survive

For the full year, Canoe racked up 23.326 billion impressions in 2017, up 30% from 17.903 billion in 2016.

Canoe ran 7,822 campaigns in 2017, up 35% from 5,783.

On average, Canoe is putting more ads in each VOD program. During fourth-quarter breaks in the middle of programs, an average of 4.04 ads ran in the fourth quarter, up from 3.73 a year ago. During pre-roll, 1.17 ads appear, up from 1.1, with 1.41 appearing in post-roll, up from 1.02.

During the fourth quarter nearly all of the impressions came from mid-roll ads. There were 5.9 billion impressions in mid-roll, compared with 969 million in pre-roll and 102 million in post roll ads.

Related: Canoe Marks 100 Billion Spots Inserted in VOD Programming

Campaigns that employ frequency capping put that cap at two impressions, on average.

The ads are overwhelmingly run completely. In mid-roll, 99% of the ads run to completion. In pre-roll, it’s 90.2% and in post-roll its’s 93.4%.

VOD viewing and ad delivery peaks during the weekend. Canoe delivered 1.196 billion impression on Sundays and 1.185 billion on Saturdays, the two biggest days of the week during the fourth quarter.

Canoe inserts ads in programming in 36 million households service by Charter Spectrum, Comcast and Cox, up from 35 million households a year ago. Those operators own Canoe as a joint venture.

Burying the hatchet on a patent spat between the companies, Sprint and Cox Communications inked a new multi-year business agreement centered on the densification of Sprint’s wireless network.

Under the deal, part of a settlement that ends the aforementioned patent suits, paves the way for Sprint to use Cox’s broadband infrastructure for to accelerate the densification of Sprint’s wireless network while also beefing up the efficiency of its macro backhaul and small cell deployment.

Sprint noted that the new deal with Cox “will significantly accelerate deployment” throughout Cox's national footprint.

The agreement will also “increase and strengthen other business ties between the two companies,” the companies added, but didn’t elaborate on what that provision might specifically entail or if it might include an option for Cox to pursue an MVNO agreement with Sprint.

Cox would only add that the new agreement is “related to patent suit settlement and involves us providing additional services to Sprint that we offer today (wireless backhaul, small cell, etc.). They (and other carriers) will continue to be one of our largest customers.”

Unlike Comcast and Charter Communications, Cox did not push forward with an MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications that stemmed from the sale of Advanced Wireless Services spectrum to the mobile carrier. Cox previously built and deployed its own mobile service, but pulled the plug on that effort in late November 2011. Sprint and Altice USA announced the formation of a “full” MVNO deal last November.

RELATED: Altice USA, Sprint Strike ‘Full’ MVNO Deal

“This is another opportunity to work with a strategic partner to accelerate our densification plans to improve our network performance and experience for Sprint customers throughout Cox's national territory," Sprint CTO John Saw said, in a statement. “Moving forward, we will continue to look for new opportunities to work with Cox in ways that are mutually beneficial."

"We are pleased to continue our positive, long-term working relationship that benefits both companies and consumers," added Steve Rowley, executive vice president, Cox Business. 

The deal ends a court battle between Cox and Sprint. Last March, Cox asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to a decision that the MSO’s VoIP service infringed on certain Sprint patents.

Sprint and Comcast settled a separate patent last fall. Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications) lost its case with Sprint in a judgement handed down last year. Sprint’s suit against Cable One was dismissed by the court in November 2016, according to court documents.

RELATED: Comcast Settles Sprint Patent Spat for $250M

In December, Sprint targeted Mediacom Communications in a suit alleging that the cable operator had violated more than a dozen patents tied to VoIP services.

Cox Communications said its premium whole-home WiFi offering, branded as Panoramic WiFi, has surpassed 1 million customers about 14 months after it was introduced.

Cox launched Panoramic WiFi last fall in markets such as San Diego, Orange County and Santa Barbara last fall, and extended it to all Cox markets in June 2017. During that span, Cox said it did have a month in which it added 185,000 new Panoramic WiFi subs.

RELATED: Cox Goes Wide With ‘Panoramic WiFi’

Cox sells the premium whole-home product starting at $9.99 per month. Panoramic WiFi uses a modem/router with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem (supporting up to 24 downstream channels and eight upstream channels) and dual-band 802.11ac WiFi.  That’s matched with network management app for iOS and Android mobile devices, and a customized WiFi installation.

Cox also rents out WiFi extenders that utilize MoCA 2.0 technology for $4 each per month.

RELATED: Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up (subscription required)

Cox’s product follows a trend by which cable operators and other ISPs are enhancing their core broadband service with premium WiFi offerings that provide more consistent wireless speeds throughout the house and the ability to manage those in-home wireless networks.

RELATED: Comcast Starts Rollout of ‘xFi Pods’ to Boost Whole-Home WiFi

The operator said 66% of new high-speed internet subs are choosing the Panoramic WiFi option, and that its Connect app is getting 120,000-plus WiFi “interactions” per month.

The My WiFi component in the Connect app lets users view primary and guest networks, change their wireless security settings, broadcast or hide the in-home network, change their WiFi network passwords, name or rename devices, view WiFi signal strength, and even send a reboot signal to the modem.

“While designing and developing Panoramic WiFi, we listened to our customers and applied that feedback to delivering a premium user experience,” Philip Nutsugah, senior vice president, product development and management, said in a statement. Our customers want an effortless and predictable WiFi experience that delivers the speed and reliability they expect. They want to have confidence that they are equipped with tools to optimize and manage their home WiFi.”

Cox Communications has integrated Netflix on compatible “Contour” set-tops that are powered by Comcast’s cloud-based X1 platform.

RELATED: Cox Goes Wide With New ‘Contour’

Cox is expected to announce more detail about the integration later today, but this customer support page, first spotted by Fierce Cable, notes that Cox customers can now access Netflix from their Contour 2 receivers. Like Comcast’s Netflix integration, Cox’s version weaves the OTT service into search results and is supported by Contour’s voice remote.

However, the current version of Contour 2 does not support 4K, so that part of Netflix’s library is not available to Cox subs on the set-top box. It might only be a matter of time. Comcast recently extended support for Netflix’s 4K library on X1 devices,  starting with the XG1v4,  that can render the new pixel-packed video format.

RELATED: Comcast Streams Netflix 4K Fare to X1 Boxes

Update: Cox announced Monday afternoon the integration of Netflix on Cox Contour nationwide at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit in San Francisco.

“Cox has supported Netflix subscribers for years with our high-speed internet service and now we’re improving the experience by adding the Netflix service to the Contour TV guide,” Pat Esser, president of Cox, said in a statement. “Customers want to easily access the content they care about – across sources – anytime, anywhere; we’ll continue to look for more ways to improve the video experience.”

Because Netflix is delivered to set-tops OTT via the public internet, that content is subject to Cox’s usage-based internet policy. Cox recently introduced an unlimited data option that complements a policy in which it charges customers $10 for an extra 50 gigabytes when they exceed their monthly data plan.

RELATED: Cox Nears Launch of Unlimited Data Plan

Cox’s integration of Netflix isn’t a surprise, as it has been adding new features already rolled out by Comcast on its X1 platform on a regular cadence.

RELATED: OTT Becomes A-OK on the STB

In an interview earlier this year, Kevin Hart, Cox’s EVP and chief product and technology officer, said that OTT set-top box integration is “on our near-term roadmap.”

Hart also noted that Cox is working on a cloud DVR product. Comcast offers a cloud DVR service for X1 and has also completed an integration of YouTube.

Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer for Cox Communications, is set to chair the Fall Technical Forum for SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, which heads back to Atlanta next year.

In that role, Hart will lead the committee that builds the Expo Fall Technical Forum, which includes an array of workshops on key industry engineering and business topics, and is a joint production of SCTE•ISBE, NCTA, and CableLabs.

Cable-Tec Expo 2018 is set for Oct. 22-25, at the Georgia World Congress Center.

RELATED: Talkin’ Tech

Hart, who chaired Cable-Tec Expo when the vent was held in Atlanta in 2013, takes over for co-chairs of this year’s show in Denver – Terry Cordova, vice chairman, business development-network and technology services, Altice USA; and Jim Blackley, executive vice president, engineering and information technology, Charter Communications.

“Year in and year out, Kevin Hart’s vision, commitment to excellence, and technology expertise have helped Cox be among the very best at transforming the lives of consumers,” Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE, said in a statement. “Kevin’s leadership will be key to shaping an Expo program that will help to drive deeper understanding of the value of training, standards, and thought leadership as catalysts for improvement in operators’ bottom lines.”

“In a rapidly-shifting media landscape, it’s essential for cable to continue to prepare the technology workforce for the changes ahead,” said Hart, who took part in this year’s Multichannel News technology roundtable. “I look forward to working with the Cable-Tec Expo 2018 Program Committee to create an agenda that will provide SCTE•ISBE members and Expo attendees with the technical knowledge and industry insights they need to maintain our competitive edge well into the future.”

Before joining Cox, Hart was CIO of Clearwire and Level 3 Communications. He started his career with SBC Communications.